


Wicked Game - Full Edition

by Mangacat, silkylustre



Series: Wicked Game [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Blood Drinking, Consensual Non-Consent, Consent Issues, Demon Blood, Demon Dean Winchester, Extremely Dubious Consent, Knifeplay, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 4-4.5 Hours, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Season/Series 10, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:02:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3955240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangacat/pseuds/Mangacat, https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkylustre/pseuds/silkylustre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam tries to thank the stars that his newly demonic brother has apparently decided to fixate on him instead of wreaking havoc all over the country, but he is under no illusion that life with a demonic version of Dean is very likely going to be… well, hell.</p><p>Spoilers up to 9x23 and canon-divergent from there! :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wicked Game - Full Edition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silkylustre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkylustre/gifts).



> Disclaimer:  
> I own neither Supernatural and don’t make a claim to its creative or economic profit. Just shoveling in the sandbox for a bit, I’ll give them back after playing. Promise.
> 
> Author's Note:
> 
> Wow, I'm really baffled by this because when I set out to extend this story together with silky after we came together for our pod_together party favour I had absolutely NO IDEA how much my life was about to change for the better. I gained a new friend, new confidence and had a great time working on this story like I've never worked on a fic before.  
> And now that it's done and came in at a whooping almost-30k - I'm just floored by the experience I took away from it. So, for those who've been waiting so very long since the *teaser* thanks guys, for those who are new to the story, have fun and definitely listen to the story as a podfic, because it's AWESOME.
> 
> Reader's Note:
> 
> Imagine two voices, exchanged through the curious channels of modern technology.  
> One of them hisses: "Write me this, author minion!"  
> The other howls in response: "Give my creation LIFE!"  
> They do.  
> In the process, they gain several things: deep appreciation for each other's work, the joy of creating together, and, last but not least, friendship which shines light on the manifold darknesses of life.  
> Also, PORN.

Listen, streamingly, right here:

Download the MP3 [here](http://silkylustre.parakaproductions.com/Supernatural/SamDean/WickedGame/Wicked%20Game%20complete.mp3)!

~*~

Sam blinks blearily into the murky darkness of his room. He doesn’t know what woke him exactly, but sleep is a rare commodity anyway these days. He feels like he is always searching, always opening newscasts with trepidation to check whether today has brought carnage somewhere wearing his brother’s face. He returned to the bunker after weeks of fruitless search to see whether he’d be able to dig up something in the archives that would help him find Dean, but so far, nothing. At least at the same time Sam hasn’t found any reports he can trace back to serious demonic omens, but that leaves him with literally nowhere to start. Sam rubs the grit out of his eyes and gets up to make coffee; go back to his research since trying to go back to sleep will be pointless.

He’ll blame it on the perpetual exhaustion he’s feeling by now that he doesn’t notice all his instincts clamouring until he’s shuffled his way into the reading room. Still, opening his eyes to the sight of his brother leaning with his hip propped against a table casually would have been like a bucket of ice water either way, so the shock that paralyses his body isn’t entirely due to surprise.  
“Well, hello Sam. Just the man I was looking for.”  
A devious smirk tugs at Dean’s lips, while Sam just stands there, gaping. When Sam doesn’t respond, he lifts one eyebrow.  
“What? No hug for your dear big brother?”

Finally, Sam is able to move again, if only to lean against the doorjamb because his legs threaten to give out. On his last word, Dean lets his eyes flash inky black and confirms what Sam has only seen in his nightmares so far. Sam tries to get his bearings and keep from showing any more weakness in front of the predator wearing his brother’s skin. He glances around surreptitiously, casting around for a distraction, something, anything, to say.  
“Where’s Crowley?”  
Dean pouts, as if he is actually hurt that Sam made no move towards him and then outright sneers at the question.  
“The hell do I care. Howling at the moon, my ass. He’s like one of those soccer moms who think they have to go find themselves in a guru resort and then notice they can’t live without the kids and all that ruckus. And always bitching… I was bored to tears. So the prodigal son returns! And I like to be entertained. Are you going to entertain me, Sammy?”  
Dean draws slowly closer as he’s talking, invading Sam’s personal space until their chests are barely an inch apart. Sam’s lizard brain is firing on all cylinders that he should be retreating or at least cowering, but he refuses to back down, even though Dean is nothing but a presence of raw power and barely contained, volatile strength. 

He tries to infuse every ounce of confidence he can scrape together into his voice:  
“What do you want?”  
Dean chuckles, leans in until his lips just about touch Sam’s ear, sending a shiver down his spine when the warm breath ghosts over the sensitive area.  
“Well, what do you think I’d come back here for? The water pressure? It’s all you, Sammy,” Sam can feel Dean’s lips stretch into a wicked smile. “I want you. I want to mess with your pretty little head.”  
Dean just brushes by then, leaving Sam trying to keep himself from sliding to the floor. He tries to thank the stars that his newly demonic brother has apparently decided to fixate on him instead of wreaking havoc all over the country, but he is under no illusion that life with a demonic version of Dean is very likely going to be… well, hell. 

~*~

Sam is at a complete loss for what to do, now that Dean has left him standing there with weak knees and a thundering pulse. Him showing up unexpectedly on his own makes Sam’s research of tracking spells obsolete, but he doesn’t really know how to take what Dean so clearly stated as his intentions. He has no idea, really, how much of that… of that demon is his brother, whether Dean’s soul got twisted by the mark or if something _else_ just jumped at the chance of some prime real estate. When he hears AC/DC blasted at an unbearable volume from the corridor down where Dean’s room is located, he’s inclined to file that under exhibit B, case closed, but he knows from personal experience in their line of work, that you cannot trust anything to be what it seems until you've doused it with holy water or cut it with a silver blade. Neither of which is going to be particularly helpful in this case. So Sam decides, since he’s running on fumes, to go make that coffee after all and figure out his next steps concerning his infernal roommate later.

Sam half expects Dean to be gone again when he stumbles – freshly caffeinated – out of the kitchen, a terrifying fever dream brought on by the fact that he hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in a couple of months. But he’s still there, a shadowy presence in the halls of the bunker as he drifts from room to room, and Sam is half panicking about Dean having access to the storage, since there is no telling what kind of mischief he might come up with when left to his own devices among all these powerful artefacts. But Sam is more afraid that speaking up and trying to rein him in will cause Dean to vanish again – even if it’s just out of spite – and Sam can’t afford that. So, instead, he grits his teeth through the feeling of watchful eyes raising the hair at the nape of his neck and starts pulling files and literature on demonic possession to try and figure out if there’s a way to make sure Dean is at least _Dean_ and how to possibly turn him back into a human being. He knows a way of course, but Dean knows it too, and Sam is fairly sure that his brother would not participate willingly in such an attempt, and to try and trap him could have very dangerous consequences. Dean as he is now obviously doesn’t _want_ to be cured. 

He spends a couple of hours going back and forth between the shelves and his reading table, trying to sort the material according to what he thinks will be most useful, before sitting down and opening a big tome. Sam’s only scanned a couple of pages before Dean is sitting on the edge of the table next to his elbow and flips the book shut so fast, he just has time to snatch his fingers away from being crushed by the heavy pages.  
“Ah ah ah, Sammy; can’t have you sticking your nose where it don’t belong and finding something that shouldn’t be found. Besides, you don’t need that, because let me tell you right away that what’s in here?” He waves his hand from his chest to his face. “It’s 100% pure Dean.” Then he cocks his head lightly and lets his eyes slip into the bottomless black. “Well, you could even say, it’s 120% since I’ve ‘unlocked my full potential’. Once you’re no longer weighed down by all those pesky inhibitions and rules that are called human morals, it frees you right up to let the monster out. You should try it.”  
Dean reaches out to brush his fingers against Sam’s jaw, just barely missing his bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, and Sam fights to keep from flinching away.  
“Oh… I forgot. You did.”

The jab hits right in the gut, especially in light of what Dean’s scheming has done to him this year. A whiff of burnt flesh suddenly stings in his nose and he can’t help but turn his head away from the touch. Dean just chuckles, seemingly content that he managed to get to Sam, and he lets his hand fall back to rest on his thigh. Sam tries to tamp down on his nausea and grits out:  
“Did you want something?”  
“Why, I did, Sammy, thank you for asking. You see, I don’t want you researching how to supposedly ‘cure’ me. But I do have my end of a bargain to keep, and before I do that, I want to know everything there is to know about him. About this.”

Sam follows Dean’s gaze down to where the Mark of Cain is partly visible under his rolled-up sleeve, skin angry red and raised even now that he’s not holding the Blade, which curiously, Dean doesn’t seem to have on him right now. He raises his head to meet Dean’s eyes, which are hard green again, and his brother has obviously followed his train of thought with no effort at all.  
“Don’t worry about the Blade. It’s in a safe place where you won’t be able to find it.”  
Sam doesn’t know what rattles him more, the fact that Dean is still able to read him like an open book, like they’re still on the same wavelength that developed in their silent communications over the years, or that his brother seems way less attached to the Blade now than he had been as a human. Of course, Sam started to read up on the Mark after Dean took it, so they wouldn’t only have to rely on the details of Crowley’s obviously grossly incomplete information.  
“I wasn’t really able to put much time into it before we had to deal with the messes around Abbaddon and Metatron in a more hands on kinda way.”  
It goes unsaid that Sam has to admit that he didn’t dig as deep as he would have, if they hadn’t been so at odds with each other. He may have lied to Dean about not caring enough to try and bring him back (and look how well that turned out this time), but he was hurt and with everything else going on, the consequences of Dean taking the Mark had taken a backseat priority.  
“Which is why we’re going to make the time, now. You don’t have anything more important planned, do you, Sammy?”  
Sam slowly shakes his head. It makes sense that Dean now wants to learn more and while Sam is sure that coming to him with this is a thin excuse, it might be exactly the edge he needs to get Dean back as he’s supposed to be. From the smirk that creeps onto his face, Sam’s thoughts are quite clear to Dean as well and he knows that he has Sam, exactly for that reason. 

Sam is under no illusion that Dean will make sure to catch every piece of information they dig up and find way to try and keep Sam from using it against him, but Sam will just have to play the game better, go along with Dean’s whims and create enough of a distraction until he can get that tiny, essential step ahead or possibly face dire consequences. The prospect feels uncomfortably like the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. But Sam’s very short on options and he’s done better with worse. Kind of. So he nods.  
“Alright, I will help you.”  
“Thanks, Sammy! I knew I could count on you.”  
Dean’s answering smile is so sudden, brilliant and genuinely him that it cracks on Sam’s core like a whip. But then, he would never have made it twenty odd years in the hunting business if he didn’t know how to grin and bear it. 

~*~ 

After the first day, they settle into kind of a routine. Sam will get up and gather new material and spread it around on the reading table, while Dean will settle down across from him, usually pretending to read for all of five minutes before kicking back in his chair and propping his feet up on the table top. Then, Sam bites his tongue to keep from telling his brother to take his fucking filthy boots off the table and Dean smirks at him because he knows exactly what record is playing in Sam’s head. It’s altogether frustratingly domestic and gratingly normal. However, the continued apprehension of what Dean might do at any given moment is putting a strain on Sam’s nerves, making him feel like he’s sitting in front of a ticking bomb and slowly shedding all his protective gear. 

It doesn’t help that Dean will also pop up at random and unpredictable moments, teasing and overly familiar with a penchant for physical proximity that rattles Sam. It’s not really a level of closeness and touching they haven’t previously been comfortable with, but the way Dean does it now, it’s … warped, sensual and tender, but bordering on erotic, which throws Sam for a loop, even though Dean had stated his intentions quite clearly. What’s worse is that Sam starts analysing Dean’s behaviour towards him, from before, trying to recall if the way his brother touched or talked to him in a way that might have betrayed unusual, inappropriate interest. Sam finds himself at a complete loss because he and Dean have never had anything close to what people would call a regular familial relationship and he has no actual frame of reference. Over the years, Dean has acted towards Sam like a father, mother, brother, best friend and jealous lover and Sam has literally no idea anymore whether he was just in wilful denial all this time or if he is making it all up in his head. Whether he might have actually invited such behaviour with his own actions without ever realizing. Either way, the implications make his head spin, which leaves him off balance and vulnerable to Dean’s underhanded tactics. 

Like now, when Sam is trying to fix himself some dinner, and suddenly Dean is just _there_ ; standing so close to his back that they’re almost pressed together. His hand snakes around to where Sam’s t-shirt is rucked up a little to slide the fabric up further so Dean can splay his fingers casually over the smooth skin of Sam’s abdomen. He moves lightly until his little finger just about slips beneath the waistband of Sam’s jeans and the thumb is drawing lazy circles. Sam tries desperately to keep his stomach muscles from jumping and continues to calmly stir the stew instead. He knows that Dean just delights even more in getting a reaction out of him on top of those advances. He doesn’t let up though, settling his free hand possessively on Sam’s hip and burying his nose at the nape of Sam’s neck, hot breath causing goose-bumps to break out all over his skin.  
“Hmmm, Sammy, you smell so good. I feel like I could just eat.You.Up.”

Dean presses in so closely with the last word that Sam can feel his teeth scraping against his skin. The spoon clatters out of his fingers, and he lets his head hang forward, hands propped against either side of the stove. Thing is, the touch isn’t violent or possessive, it’s like the tender, unsolicited caress of a long-time lover and something deep and lonely inside Sam craves this kind of human connection with a ferocity that scares him, something that is so primal and raw that it doesn’t care about the source of the comfort and that has very little to do with keeping Dean here to spare the world. Sam thinks that he’d probably know how to deal with it better if Dean decided to claw his fingernails into his skin until he draws blood, but he can never, not for one moment, forget who Dean is. What he is. And it tears him up inside that he has to allow this easy familiarity as if it doesn’t bother him at all in the name of the game they’re playing, because deep, deep down, it makes him _want_. Sam draws himself back from the edge and plucks Dean’s hand from his hip, turning around in his brother’s half embrace until they face each other.  
“I’m afraid that’s the stew. You want some?”  
Dean takes a small step back, huffing out a laugh.  
“Is that so? Well, don’t mind if I do,” he quips, before he grabs a bowl from the shelf behind Sam, crowding into his space one more time. Sam tries not to cringe back and feels utterly and hilariously outgunned. 

~*~

Dean doesn’t stay in the reading hall all the time while Sam is working, sometimes roaming the corridors and vast spaces of the bunker with a kind of contained restlessness. However, he always reviews diligently what Sam’s found – which is nothing they hadn’t previously known so far – and Sam has the sneaking suspicion that Dean would know immediately if he decided to hold something back. And he also doesn’t let up with his sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant advances that Sam finds himself increasingly less capable to sidestep with his dignity intact. 

One morning, Sam shuffles bleary-eyed into his bathroom – most of the bathrooms in the bunker are communal, but when they first got here, he and Dean quickly sussed out separate, preferred locations and relished in the fact of having their own, huge spaces that in no way resembled cramped motel washrooms, even though they’d never been shy with each other. He makes it all the way to the sink, splashing water into his face, before it registers that the water was running way before he turned the faucet and he looks up into the mirror to spot his brother showering on the other side of the room, stark naked and skin glistening as suds of soap run down his toned legs. Dean seems to feel the eyes on him and turns with perfect timing, holding out a washcloth.  
“Oh, mornin’ Sam. Wanna wash my back?”  
It’s not the first time he’s seen Dean naked of course, having lived the better parts of their lives in each other’s pockets and encountering any possible amount of human and supernatural detritus covering their bodies (including that one memorable occasion of a swamp monster with spit that acted corrosive towards cotton, and wasn’t that a fun ride back to the motel). But this blatantly seductive manoeuvre throws Sam completely for a loop. He decides to do the mature thing and retreat to his room, with burning cheeks and decidedly telling haste, Dean’s gleeful laughter following him down the hall.

By the time he has slammed his door behind him, Sam scrubs his hands over his face and berates himself for having fled like a green boy instead of keeping his cool and coming up with a witty comeback. If he keeps getting tripped up by Dean’s little stunts like that, he’s never going to get that one step ahead he needs to start beating his brother at his own game. Thing is, underneath the resigned acceptance that he has to go along with Dean’s shenanigans to keep him in this place, there is the expected kind of revulsion that comes with the notion of being… intimate with his brother, despite all the newly discovered confusion about the nature of their relationship. But there’s also that part of Sam growing stronger every day that is starved for closeness and affection, for someone he doesn’t have to hide with, who knows his accomplishments and even more so his failures and accepts him without judgement. And the only person who’d be able to give him that… is Dean. What’s worse is that Sam has no way to tell whether Dean’s shamelessly acting on an attraction he actually feels, something that might have been there _before_ … or if he is using his body, his inherent sensuality, for straight up manipulation, getting Sam just where he wants him for the insidious fun of watching him break. Either way, he’s pushing Sam right towards the edge and all too often it feels like he lets him. 

Sam shuts his eyes tightly, presses his back against the door and his hand over his mouth to keep down the bitter scream that suddenly claws its way up and out of his body. He can’t afford to fall apart completely, especially since Dean might come looking for him any minute, but he allows himself a few moments of unrestrained grief for a life and a relationship he hasn’t lost but can never get back all the same. After half a dozen heaving breaths, he manages to calm his heart until it’s not thundering in his ears anymore and take care of the moisture clinging to the corner of his eyes by blinking rapidly. By the time Dean is knocking on the door, his sight is clear and his breathing is even again and Sam feels marginally equipped to deal with his brother. 

He wrenches open the door before Dean can start shouting obnoxious come on’s and greets him with an irritated “What?”.  
Dean smirks and drawls:  
“Heya, Sammy. You know, I didn’t mean to run you out of the bath this morning. I really don’t mind sharing, though, it’s not like there isn’t enough space for us to take care of business at the same time.”  
The innuendo is clear, but it’s no different from all the good-natured ribbing Dean has ever engaged in, so Sam pulls himself together and answers like he would have any other time:  
“Yeah, like I need to see your naked ass first thing in the morning,” before he shoulders his way past Dean into the corridor towards the bathroom.  
“Hey, I have a _great_ ass!”  
Sam just flips him off without turning around, ignoring Dean’s indignant squawk with an ease he doesn’t feel and pointedly closes and locks the bathroom door behind him. Somehow, they make it through the rest of the day without any more obvious forays from Dean and Sam manages to keep it together for another night. 

~*~

Sam rarely dreams of good things anymore these days. If he remembers at all, it’s mostly stuff he’d rather not, like the sound of skin ripping from flesh, the smell of fresh viscera, the feeling of bones grinding together into vicious shards. He has largely made his peace with it, wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t cherish the rare occasions when his sleeping mind isn’t filled with the horrors of this and three other worlds. Right now, he is floating in a fog that is bright and warm, a feeling like lying on a couch in front of a fire while it’s snowing outside. There are touches, lips against his collarbone, palms rubbing up and down his sides, strong fingers drifting over the sensitive skin on the inside of his left thigh, a place that never fails to make his spine tingle. Sam doesn’t get a clear image of the person with him, just sensations that feel hazy and good. He languishes a while, half aware that he is dreaming, slowly coming up until he tips over from sleep into waking and trappings of his body become sharper, more immediate. His slightly faster than normal breath, the light sheen of sweat that clings to the hair at his temples and his chest, and the very obvious erection that is tenting his sleep pants where the sheets have pooled down around his groin. 

Sam looks down his body with half-lidded eyes, moves his hand towards his cock before he hesitates, debating whether to wait for it to go down on its own, considering he might be playing right into his brother’s hands if Dean decides to drop in unannounced and finds him like this. But the last vestiges of the dream still cling to his mind and he’s been wound so tight these past days, he needs to let go of the tension _somehow_. His hand slides up over his hip and under the elastic of his pants, fingers slipping down to gently massage his balls while he rubs lazy circles at the base with his thumb. After a couple of minutes, Sam scrambles with his free hand against the elastic waistband of his sleep pants, lifts his hips a little so he can drag them down until his cock springs free from underneath the fabric. He wraps his fingers around the base in a full grip and slides his hand slowly up and down, breath quickening at the feeling of his calluses scraping over the dry, sensitive flesh. Sam swipes his palm over the head occasionally, gathering pre-come to ease the way a little, but otherwise keeps a slow and steady pace. 

It’s when he passes over a particularly sensitive spot right below the head of his cock that makes his toes curl and his eyes roll into the back of his head that he notices how the shadow in the corner next to the dresser is deeper, darker and _moving_. Sam’s breath catches in his throat and he freezes when a shape emerges from the darkness, broad shoulders and bowed legs barely visible in the ambient light creeping in from the hallway, but unmistakably Dean.  
“Oh, don’t stop on my account.”  
Sam instinctively tries to yank his hand away from his crotch…  
“No, seriously. Don’t. Stop.”  
… and finds that he can’t move his hand. 

Sam tries frantically to move his arm, but the muscles won’t budge. This is the first instance of supernatural power Dean has ever exhibited towards Sam; that confirms that he’s altered in ways that aren’t just about losing his moral compass or gaining the equivalent of some fairly distinctive contact lenses. Panic seizes Sam’s lungs and darkness creeps in at the edge of his vision as Dean prowls towards the bed. Every instinct in his body screams to run and hide from the predator coming closer and he does manage to scramble back until he is leaning halfway up against the headboard, but there is nowhere else to go. Dean slides down to sit next to Sam on the bed, his knee bumping into Sam’s left thigh and one hand coming up to settle on Sam’s neck, thumb idly stroking his jawline. Sam has to put everything he has into keeping himself from turning away from the touch. Instead, he stays utterly still when Dean leans closer, noses the shell of Sam’s ear a little before he whispers:  
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice? I could feel your arousal all the way down the hallway, just like I feel your misery and they’re so, so beautiful. But now that you started the party without me, you’ll put on a good show for me now, won’t you, Sammy?”

Sam’s insides go cold as it sinks in where they are, what kind of edge Dean is about to tip them over, but he feels powerless to stop it. And apparently, his passiveness is not appreciated. His hand starts moving again, and not entirely of his own volition. Dean’s grin is mocking, his eyes crinkled by cruel mirth. Only seconds seem to have ticked by before Dean’s commanding voice slithers into his ear.  
“Go on.”  
The sound makes his hand tighten, a groan slipping from his lips from the pressure while his flagging erection goes back to full hardness. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam can see Dean staring transfixed down the length of his body to where his fingers are picking up a rhythm again. He loathes his body even more for his reactions to this, the flush spreading on his chest, the slight jump of his cock in his hand, but he tells himself that if he backs out right now, their truce will shatter, and who knows what horrors Dean could unleash upon the world if he put his mind to it. 

So he pushes his fear and contempt aside and lets Dean slide his hand down from his neck and over his chest until his fingers twist into the hem of Sam’s t-shirt and ruck it up to his armpits. Dean bends down to place light kisses onto Sam’s left pectoral, right over his thundering heart, before he closes his lips firmly around the nipple and sucks, while stroking the other with his thumb. Sam jolts and moans, hand speeding up involuntarily as the sensations pool in his belly. He decides he can’t deal with slow and languid anymore and adds a twist of his wrist on the upstroke that drives him wild every time. When he shudders and throws his head back, Dean slows his ministrations, lets his cheek settle against Sam’s chest and watches. Sam can only see the back of Dean’s head, but it’s like he can feel the eyes fixed on where his cock is sliding through his fist and it unlocks something inside of him he’d never even known was there. Suddenly, the rush is right there, immediate and relentless. Everything focuses and stills for a moment and then Sam bites his lip to keep from crying out as he tumbles over the edge. 

His chest heaves with rapid breaths, heart beating against his ribs just as fast. Sam stares at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, tears clinging to their corners that do not fall, before Dean cups his jaw and turns his head to face him.  
“Oh, Sammy, that was… you were so, so good.”  
Dean leans forward to capture Sam’s lips in a slow kiss that he returns in a daze until his head clears and the full scope of what they are doing, what they _were_ doing sinks in. Sam wrenches his mouth away, unable to keep the horror off his face, but he only has a couple of seconds before the grip of Dean’s fingers on his jaw turns to steel and he can’t help but meet his brother’s eyes, which flicker from icy green to black.  
“Ah, ah, ah, Sammy, no take-backs. I enjoyed this immensely and I am glad we got to do it the easy way after all, but you need to understand who is in charge here.”  
Dean pauses and lets a devilish smile stretch his lips to match the black tar of his eyes.  
“You… are now well and truly _mine_.”

~*~

Dean leaves Sam to deal with the aftermath the same way he came, fading into the shadows while Sam is still too out of it to register whether or not his brother’s ways are entirely of the natural stealth variety or if he’s learned to blink after all. Sam stays put until he is quite sure he’s completely alone and his racing heart has a slowed to a degree that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to break his ribs before he stumbles down the hall to the bathroom. Leaving his sweatpants and come-stained t-shirt in a careless heap on the floor, he throws himself under the cold spray of the shower with a yelp, following the sudden urge to wash the sweat and drying come off his skin so that not a trace is left. He scrubs his hands hard over his face, pretends the salty residue is perspiration and his chest is heaving from the shock of the cold. While the water is slowly warming as it runs over his bent back, he makes a fist and jabs it against the wall a couple of times in quick succession, the pain grounding his restless mind to the point where he can sort through all the emotions crowding in his head. There is disgust and fear, helpless resignation. There’s a sated numbness that bleeds away some of the tension and a sick kind of relief from the proof just how far Dean is willing… wanting, to go and that Sam can now stop waiting for the axe to fall. 

Sam spits out a mirthless laugh at the thoroughly Winchester way of finding the one positive breadcrumb in any fucked-up situation, but it doesn’t really help alleviate his feeling like he lost part of himself just now. Wonders whether his willingness to indulge Dean and cross all these lines in the name of the game doesn’t make his goal a moot point anyway, considering the fallout they’ll have to deal with if… when Dean ever gets back to being human again and rediscovers those pesky morals. Wonders what it says about him that he isn’t really sure whether what he felt just then was a set of coerced biological reactions or a real thrill at being watched, appreciated, claimed. There is a difference between experiencing a predictable response to certain stimuli or giving oneself over, after all. Sam shakes his head and decides that now he has set himself on that path, he can’t think about it too much or it will break him apart. 

~*~

Sam expects Dean to be all over him once he steps out into the communal areas, now that he has finally crossed the line. Consequently, he’s stunned to find that he doesn’t see hide nor hair of Dean for the whole day. The feel of watchful eyes doesn’t dissipate, though. But he is certainly mystified as to why Dean would keep his distance, now of all times. Sam decides to count his blessings and bury himself in his books for the moment. He doesn’t want to deal with this shit. Let Dean have his mercurial moods. His brother will come calling soon enough. 

By the time midday has well and truly passed though, the itch between Sam’s shoulder blades has become more than distracting. The uncertainty of not knowing what’s going on somehow grows worse than the prospect of confronting Dean. In the end, Sam drops his pen, closes the latest tome with a dusty thump. He scrubs his hand over his tired eyes before finally getting up. He checks the corridors around the reading hall and the kitchen cursorily, but he is well aware that he isn’t going to catch Dean at anything if his brother doesn’t want to be found. 

At last, Sam is drawn to the living quarters by the heavy bassline that fills the corridor leading to Dean’s room. He stops right outside the door and wonders if he can pretend that this is proof enough of his brother’s whereabouts, but of course he can’t just let it lie. It’s half a refusal to let what happened this morning rule his actions, and half the simmering need to have Dean in his sights somehow, if only to make sure Dean doesn’t bail and it was all for nothing. So, Sam grits his teeth and raises his hand to rap his knuckles at the door as loudly as he can.  
“Dean?”  
When there is no answer, Sam debates trying once more or attempting to simply turn the knob, fully aware of the potentially dangerous consequences of invading Dean’s privacy like that, if it’s not locked in the first place. 

Before he can come to a decision, though, the track changes and the muted, subtle guitar intro of Skynyrd’s ‘Simple Man’ drifts through the door. The song registers together with the couple tracks he heard when coming to find Dean and something clicks in Sam’s head. He knows exactly which tape is playing in the ancient cassette deck that Dean dragged out from storage just after getting his new mattress. It’s the one that Dean made when he was seventeen and ready to hit the road fulltime instead of making sure his prepubescent little brother got to school on time and his microwavable dinners after. He never let the strain of doing all the heavy lifting on the parenting side of things show in their interactions or conversations, especially once Sam started getting confrontational with John. But when that tape went in, Sam learned that it was time to back off and let Dean work out shit for himself. It’s been used rather sparingly over the years, like that time when the Impala needed some major rebuilding; after Dean had to shove a heap of grave dirt aside in Pontiac, Illinois, with his bare hands; when they lit the pyre for the man who’d been their father in all the ways that made blood insignificant and then lit it again. 

Dean listening to this tape has always been an indicator that things were decidedly FUBAR, but right now, it fills Sam’s chest with a fierce, burning sensation of hope. He puts his hands flat on the wood, and lets his forehead fall against the cool surface. Imagines Dean leaning against the door from the other side in a much similar fashion, waiting for Sam to go away, almost close enough to touch and still shutting him out. It stings, but doesn’t cut as deep as Sam thought it might have. Because, despite all the evidence of the contrary, the fact that his brother would fall back on such an utterly human source of comfort is finally proof that there isn’t just a dark, evil entity that has set up shop inside Dean’s body, but the _person_ , everything that made him who he is, is still buried underneath. And maybe, just maybe, if he just found the right button to push, Sam would be able to draw that part to the surface again.

It could be a ploy of course, because Dean is just as aware of all their secret codes and implicit ways of communicating as he was _before_. Sam can’t blindly trust any of his brother’s cues, but he wants to believe in this case so, so badly.  
“Come on, Dean, what are you doing to us?”  
The next track coming on is Thunderstruck and with the opening, the volume inside is turned up to a degree that Sam probably wouldn’t be able to yell over it if he tried. It answers the question of whether his brother is actually in the room, but it leaves him with a steaming heap of nothing regarding everything else. 

Sam clenches his fist against the door, but decides he’s in no shape to actually push the matter and deal with what will come down when Dean’s temper flares. He’s too wired to go back to research, however, the need to burn off nervous energy settling in his bones. So, Sam heads down to the pool, one of the bunker’s hidden treasures he’d discovered in the past couple of years. It’s not a very big room, just the pool itself and about five feet of space all around, a couple of stone benches against the wall. The low ceiling and lots of indirect light giving it a ‘grotto’ feel and the ornamental fountain running from the wall at the far end puts it squarely in the art nouveau category of the bunker’s eccentric interior design. 

It’s just what Sam needs though, as he quickly changes out of his clothes and stores them on a narrow ledge on the wall, pulling on his trunks, before sliding into the water. The soothing repetition of lap after lap does wonders to quiet Sam’s mind. Concentrating on a churning rhythm, he doesn’t have to focus on anything but the next breath. Sam feels loose and comfortable. The constant movement is bleeding tension out of his back which he’s gotten so used to that it hadn’t even registered anymore.

Finally, Sam slaps his hands on the rim of the pool, before he takes hold of the ladder and finds his footing on the lower rungs to drag himself out. Water sluices down his chest and into his eyes, so he stops to shake his head until the droplets fly. When he looks up again, he sees the door ajar and a dark silhouette partially blocking the light from the hallway. Sam freezes, save for his laboured breath, and wonders if this is the end of his reprieve and Dean will come for him again, right now. But after a few seconds tick by in a silent stand-off, the shadow melts away and just leaves the sliver of light falling through the open door. 

Sam barely manages to turn his body and drop down onto the rim of the pool before his trembling arms give out. The hitch in his breath isn’t from physical exertion, but from trepidation and a tangled knot of emotions. But buried underneath, deep down in his gut, there’s the whisper of a thrill, like a thorn that digs deeper and draws blood with every breath. It belongs to the part of Sam that remembers the fingers brushing over his chest this morning and imagines the same hands drawing shapes on his body with the moisture clinging to his skin. He smooths his hair back over his head and wonders what it says about him that the ghost of his brother’s intimate touch elicits both aversion and craving in him, now that he’s actually had a taste. Asks himself in the solitude of his own mind if maybe that current has been there, running between them all these years, and now it’s just about simply giving up the pretence, letting a single spark ignite it fully.  
Either way, he’s in too deep.

~*~

Sam spends the night tossing and turning, finally falling into a troubled sleep in the early hours of the morning. When he emerges the next day, in that strange headspace between clear awareness and exhaustion, he makes a beeline for the kitchen and the burbling coffeemaker. That alone should have tripped his senses, but he’s barely had a chance to make it through the door when he’s intercepted by Dean. His brother, who is leaning against the door jamb, whirls Sam around to face him with an insistent grip on his arm. And before Sam can even catch his breath, Dean crashes their mouths together, forward, irreverent and unrelenting. Sam had tried to steel himself for Dean’s next move, even after his brother mysteriously backed off for the entire day, but he’s woefully unprepared to deal with an ambush in the kitchen doorway, except to stand there and take it. His fight or flight instinct is definitely confused as hell. Except the hell fiend in front of him doesn’t seem to be confused at all.

Dean obviously knows exactly what he wants. He’s quite dissatisfied with simply plundering Sam’s mouth as he sees fit without any input from the other party. The gradually tightening vice around his biceps communicates just as well as words that Dean has no plans to let Sam just check out of their encounters to let himself be used. No, his smart, devious brother obviously expects him to be an active participant in his own corruption and play his part convincingly at that. When the fingers on his arm begin to bite painfully into his skin, Sam is able to shake his shock and start moving his lips against Dean’s insistent mouth. His participation is reluctant at first, unskilful and sloppy, but rewarded with a thumb softly stroking over the spot where a bruise will soon be forming on his arm. 

It’s not that he’s entirely unfamiliar with the feeling of stubble against his chin or the hard planes of a flat chest pressed against his own. Sam did go a little wild in his Freshman Year, made out with a couple of guys at parties, high on weed and his new, hard-won independence. But hooking up with girls had always seemed less complicated and once he’d fallen in love with Jess, exploring that part of him any further had become irrelevant. 

Consequently, Sam can lose himself when he closes his eyes, imagines a faceless stranger, a fantasy to blur his brother’s features in his mind’s eye. But Dean taught him that move of sliding your tongue just so over the edge of your partner’s upper lip when he was fourteen. A move he used very successfully on a lot of girls and, after they’d learned it and turned it back on him, discovered that it drives him wild. Something Dean shouldn’t know, but uses all the same to drag Sam even closer when his knees go weak from the sensation. However, Sam’s blood turns to ice in his veins when he becomes aware of the erection pressed into his thigh, but he forces himself to keep the rhythm going. He can feel Dean’s wicked grin against his lips and half expects to be bent over the kitchen table any minute. But his brother actually slows their pace to a bare press of lips, before he backs off and casually brushes by to the counter, where the coffeemaker is happily gurgling fresh brew into a cup. 

Dean leaves Sam on his own in the kitchen, flustered and squashing the need to adjust his jeans. He doesn’t want to give Dean the satisfaction, even in absentia. He rattles around, preparing himself an uncommonly big breakfast and eating it at the kitchen table instead of just taking a bowl of cereal to gobble up while making notes. But in the end, there’s nothing left to do but go out into the reading hall. Rationally, he knows that Dean’s behaviour is designed to knock him off balance, a strategy to keep him guessing where the next move will be coming from. However, being aware of the fact doesn’t make it any less effective. 

~*~

Dean lounges in his customary spot opposite Sam’s at the research-laden table, sipping his coffee and rustling the paper. Sam tenses at the sight, because they can’t very well get the morning paper delivered to a secret lair, so this is the first sign he’s seen that Dean has actually left the bunker since he came back. He doesn’t comment on it, since it’s not like he can put a bell on Dean and curtail his movements either way. And it’s hardly comparable to a murder spree if his brother decides that he wants to follow the news. But it shatters the almost comfortable illusion that they’re cocooned in here. It’s all well and good if Sam has to sacrifice his own safety and dignity to keep the rest of the world safe until this plays out, but it’s little things like this that drive home the point that Sam doesn’t have an indefinite amount of time to figure things out. 

After he’s settled down and started organizing his papers for the day, Sam has to admit to himself that he’s in a deep research rut. Normally, the chance to bury himself in his books would be enough to take his mind off the more complicated problems in his life for a couple of hours at least. But he has been stuck finding the same old information, or nothing relevant at all, for a few days now. Not only does that make him all the more aware of Dean’s presence across the table, he also feels like the pressure of not being able to deliver what his brother asked for is slowly turning into another heavy weight around his heart. 

Sam hunches over the books, eyes gritty and dry from trying to decipher the smelly, ancient print. His shoulders are aching from the constant tension and uncomfortable posture. He isn’t even aware Dean has moved, until a pair of strong, warm hands lands on his neck, thumbs slowly digging into the knotted muscles there.  
“Relax.”  
The sudden, close proximity of Dean at his back startles Sam, ramps up the tension even more. But there is something in his brother’s voice, something in his touch that is familiar, soothing, and Dean knows exactly where to press down to turn Sam’s body boneless. His eyes flutter closed from the sensation of Dean’s fingers kneading the corded muscles of his neck and he lets himself drift for just a couple of moments. 

It’s something they’ve done for each other from time to time, not often, and never talked about, because Winchesters don’t share physical affection in a way that’s not flippant and teasing, except when they’re about to die. But their life is a hard one on mind and body. And even though they’ve both been remade more than once by divine and nefarious powers over the years, they still sometimes feel the phantom aches of their scars, and the sore tug of their muscles down to the bone. And then it helps for someone to just dig in and loosen the knots.  
“You’ve been huffing and puffing over here as if those stuffy books have done something to personally offend you. Just watching it is setting my teeth on edge.”

The acerbic comment is just like Dean, who definitely isn’t one for molly-coddling pep talks. Dean would split before letting anyone in on the fact that he cared, but that’s what he does, showing concern and helping out by pretending to lessen his own discomfort. Sam’s heart clenches, to have another of his brother’s familiar mannerisms turned around on him this way. But all the same, his brain reacts the way it always does when Dean throws a challenge his way. He shuts down all outside distractions and takes a mental step back to look at what he’s been doing. It’s more than clear that with the sources he’s got available; his line of inquiry is going nowhere fast. So there are two options: either go out and find different sources – which is inadvisable, both because Dean would accompany him, and because any and all more pertinent information on Cain and the Blade would only be available from the likes of Crowley, who is exactly the last person Sam is going to permit near Dean again. Let alone trust what comes out of his mouth. The other option is… a new line of inquiry.

Once the thought enters his head, Sam’s mind starts to race and he realizes that he’s been looking in the wrong direction all along. What he needs is not to hunt down obscure details about Cain’s history that are unlikely to ever have made it into written records. That's a search that is never going to yield results on the inner workings of Mark and Blade – the information Dean is ultimately after. Sam needs to widen the scope, look at objects of power in a general sense. The Blade isn’t the only kind of magical entity that gives the wielder special power or influences their mind in some way. In his head, Sam is already putting together a list of titles he’s seen referenced or catalogued, when another thought hits him. He’s got the most important source right there, even though it’s going to be even more of a tightrope walk to involve him. But Sam is on a roll now, quite sure that this is the only way to get what he wants to know, what they both want to know, and he doesn’t have it in him to _stop_.

“Dean, where is the Blade?”  
The fingers that have just been lying lightly on his shoulders for quite some time now clench in an obvious, painful warning, but Sam can’t let that deter him. Not when he’s finally found an in.  
“I told you, nowhere you would be able to get to it. And it’s not like you need it to do your thing.”  
Sam swivels around halfway with his chair to be able to look Dean in the eye. This moment is crucial to get Dean on board; Sam can feel it in his gut.  
“But what if I do? There’s a reason we’d never heard of Cain or the Blade, before Crowley dragged that information out of his treasure chest. It’s because there’s nothing here to find. And short of tracking down Cain and getting the facts out of him personally, you are the only one with the ability to tell how it really works.”

Sam watches Dean’s frown deepen with every word, but his brother’s hand is only clenched into a loose fist at his side, so he figures he’s got an edge for now.  
“Before… when you… it was taking over. Making you irrational, desperate for a fix. You wouldn’t even let the Blade out of your sight in case you got the opportunity to kill something. Its power was controlling your actions, but now… things are different. It’s not even here, is it?”  
Dean narrows his eyes dangerously at the implication that he was just a puppet of the Blade’s power and Sam can see a volatile reaction brewing in the tense lines of his body, but he needs to draw him out if there is any hope for him to gather new information. He isn’t quite prepared for his wrists to get stuck to the armrests of his chair when Dean flexes his fingers into a tight fist, before the whole chair careens into the wall where Sam’s head hits stone with a painful thwack and is kept in place in an unnaturally ramrod straight position. 

“You really think I would hide the Blade in a hole somewhere, just because I don’t need it anymore to split your pretty little head, if I wanted to?”  
Sam makes it a point not to struggle against the invisible force holding him down while Dean stalks after him with long strides, but his heart is beating double time in two seconds flat. Dean draws closer, propping himself up with one hand splayed wide on Sam’s thigh while holding up the other so Sam can see the Mark burning red and angry on his forearm.  
“Wrong again, Sammy. You wanna see the Blade? Well, it’s right here.”

Sam’s eyes flicker between Dean’s icy stare and his outstretched arm with trepidation when he sees Dean grit his teeth and the Mark pulse like dying embers. He watches in horror as tar-black demonic smoke rises from the skin around it, drifting slowly up towards Dean’s hand. The shape of the First Blade materializes in Dean’s open palm, with the deceptively keen upper edge coming to rest perfectly aligned with Sam’s jugular, where the pulse is beating against it like a staccato drum.  
“That close enough for you, Sammy?”  
A slice of the very little, analytical part of Sam’s brain that is not brimming with unholy terror is utterly fascinated by the concept that Dean apparently keeps the Blade _inside his body_ somehow, but most of what is left of his rational mind is busy telling the other 98% that Dean isn’t really going to kill him just to drive a point home. He’s making a damn good impression of it, though.

“Yeah, I did pick up a few things on my way around the block with the King of Hell. But he, like everyone else, needs to realize that I’m not just some weapon to be pointed at a target; a pet to be kept; an oddity to be studied.”  
A very calculated press down nicks Sam’s skin so that just a couple of drops of blood run along the edge of the Blade, making it clear that the last quip was directed at him. Sam finds Dean’s gaze and holds it, wordlessly telling him that the message was received. Dean lifts his eyebrow and grins maliciously, as if he’s gearing up for a blow that he knows will hit Sam in a way he doesn’t anticipate.  
“You want to know what it’s like? To have this power sing inside you? To be free like that? I’ll tell you.” 

Dean opens his hand and the Blade immediately turns back to smoke that sinks into the skin of his forearm. He closes his eyes in concentration and flexes his fingers while the pulsing glow of the Mark fades and when he opens his eyes again, they are the bottomless black of Sam’s darkest nightmares.  
“You know what Crowley said to me when I was lying there, trapped in my own body, before he put the Blade back into my hand, woke me up to this brave new world? ‘See, what I see. Feel, what I feel.’ He was trying to prepare me for how your perception changes, as a demon. The world opens up with so many more sights and sounds than meets the human eye. You see the true nature of things. Taste the depth of emotions like the static of an oncoming storm on your tongue.”

Dean slowly leans in to where one single drop of blood has made its way over Sam’s sweat-slick skin towards his collar and brushes his lips along its path with lazy, open-mouthed kisses. Sam wants to flinch away, but finds himself still unable to move, at the mercy of Dean’s ministrations. His brother finally closes his mouth over the open wound, tracing the cut with his tongue. It’s not deep enough to bleed anymore and the sting is something Sam would barely even be aware of on any given day, but his breath still stalls in his throat. He wonders what his brother tastes in his blood right this second. Then, Dean moves away only so far that his next words send a shiver of breath over Sam’s skin.  
“Everything becomes so much clearer –, creeds, fears, desires – when you can look further than skin-deep. See what people are made of. How they chip away at themselves to feed all those little vices.”  
Dean tilts his head up until they see eye to eye. 

“Most of them don’t even have a concept of what their soul actually is, and yet they’re so eager to pelt it with filth until lust and avarice and pride have sunk in and etched their permanent marks on it. And they’re so easy to manipulate, you’ve got no idea, Sammy, it’s like they _want_ to be used. And that’s what demons do,… _seeing_ , pulling the right strings so that people follow the lead, desperate for little scraps of power and the illusion of control over their lives.”  
Sam’s stomach sinks further with every word, dread curdling in his belly. Because he had known, objectively, what it might mean that Dean had really become a demon, but before now that hadn’t really hit home, deceptively cradled in self-imposed ignorance. That cold comfort falls away even as Sam gets what he wanted.  
“And after a lifetime as a pawn tossed about willy-nilly by the forces of ‘good and evil’, always fighting against the tide to save humanity, just so they can drive themselves off a cliff, I became a player in the game. I got to take control of my own life, to do whatever the hell I wanted with it. I fucked, and I fought, and I killed every last son of a bitch who dared come at me, because I could. I’m a predator, not prey anymore. That’s the kinda freedom you get.”

Sam tries not to let his brother’s offhand confession cloud his judgement. He’s got Dean talking now and needs to make the most of this opportunity. Besides, there’s something in the way Dean’s phrasing his personal demonic manifesto, that stirs a question in Sam’s mind. A question that’s been asked before, but not satisfactorily answered. Because if Dean really revels so much in the renegade, devil-may-care lifestyle with the world at his feet and no one to answer to, then…  
“Then why are you even here? And don’t give me that bull about messing with me, this can’t just about me.”

He’s framed it in a confrontational way, so Sam expects the question to take his brother aback at least a little bit, but Dean takes it completely in stride, running his fingers into Sam’s hair, cradling his head like a little child that needs soothing.  
“Oh, but it is about you. See, all those people out there, it’s so easy to lead them on, make them give you what they want, and make them love you for it, even though you’re just taking. But for all its perks, that kinda life loses its shine, very fast. No one really puts up a fight for their flimsy, ordinary souls, and those that do? Psh, it gets dull to even think about trying.”  
The careless dismissal of ordinary people incites helpless rage in Sam, since saving the lives of those innocents used to be all the reason Dean needed to do what he did. But that will have to wait, because there’s nothing Sam can do about it right now.

“But you, Sammy, you are a welcome challenge, even a thrill. I couldn’t be sure until I came back here and saw you again for the first time, but your soul… it’s beautiful in its shredded agony.”  
Dean’s fingers dig into Sam’s thigh, right over a spot where Sam remembers,– buried deep, deep down – Lucifer once picking the muscle apart little by little, like a half-cut rope slowly unraveling from the weight it bears. It turns the rage to ashen horror that is half a memory of pain, half alarm about the way Dean is now able to spot all those vulnerable places Sam keeps inside. 

Suddenly, his hand is moving to grab Dean’s wrist in a panicked grip, wrenching his fingers away. His brother lets him, deliberately lifting the hold he’d kept on Sam’s body, but the smile that stretches his lips combines something profoundly joyful and utterly vicious. It tells Sam that they’re not done by a long shot.  
“You were always so eager to wreck yourself for what you thought was the right thing. You got your hands dirty so that all of them, even the filthiest human scum out there, wouldn’t have to. And with all the darkness inside you, the temptation, you still weren’t willing to stop trying to save the world. Now, imagine I could take that strength, that determination and turn it. Make you realize that you owe the world fuck all. Tap into that power and make a feast of what you’ve only ever had a taste of. You’d be able to keep up with me and together we’d be unstoppable.”

Sam’s breath catches in his throat, because in his excitement, Dean has just let slip what might turn out to be that edge Sam’s been looking for. The plan to drag Sam into the darkness with him, because he represents everything good and desirable in his life might sound terrifying on the surface, but it also reveals something very specific about Dean’s motivations. After waking up with a new set of demonic powers, minus one human conscience, and with the King of Hell likely very eager to please his new ‘partner in crime’, Dean doesn’t seem to have found what he truly wants in the fulfillment of all his primal desires. Instead of living his new life as a demon, no holds barred, Dean came here, even though he knew Sam would fight tooth and nail to drag his brother’s humanity back to the surface. And maybe it’s not just the challenge to master someone who will fight back, but underneath the bloodlust and hedonistic pleasures, Dean is actually searching for another way to channel that energy. A compass that leads him to something deeper than instant gratification. 

Tears that will not fall burn behind Sam’s eyes. Because if what he suspects is true, then his remarkable brother, despite waking up as one of the creatures they had dedicated their lives to hunt, is fighting to fit his new nature around the core of his very being, instead of the other way round. It’s still all tangled up in a complicated mess of duty, desire and dependency. Sam can’t even be sure whether it’s a deliberate choice or a subconscious need on Dean’s part, but it gives him hope. Hope that there is a way to find their equilibrium, be a unit again, something that’s been off for such a long time now, much longer than this most recent blowout. Sam is well aware it is likely going to involve doing things he’d never thought himself capable of before. The lengths he would go to to keep his brother in any way he can sometimes scare him, but that hasn’t stopped both of them before and it won’t stop him now. 

Sam tries to keep the full realization locked inside him, but he can’t help reaching out to lay his fingers on his brother’s cheek, stubble rough against his palm, and the skin over his cheekbone soft under Sam’s thumb. He registers absently that this is the first time he’s initiated contact between them since Dean came back, and the result is staggering. Dean’s eyes go wide, and within a blink they’re green, startled, human, before he rears back as if Sam’s touch is charged with electricity. It only takes a second for Dean to find his footing again though, and then he fixes Sam with an icy look that confirms he realized that he revealed more than he probably intended to and is not happy about it. The palpable aura of rage about him makes Sam go very still, muscles tensing with the anticipation of violence. 

But just as fast as it came on, Dean tucks it away again, proving without a doubt that the demon inside has much more control over the urges the Mark is most likely fueling right now than the man ever had. He grins as if the world hasn’t just turned on its axis and takes another step back.  
“I’m going to get some air. Being cooped up in here with nothing to do but watch you simmer all day is driving me up the walls.”  
His smile is brittle and false, belying the fact that they both know exactly what a blatant smokescreen those words are. Dean turns around to head for the stairs, and Sam doesn’t make a move to stop him, even though he’s got no way of knowing what Dean’s going to do once he’s out there, or when he’ll be back. It’s both a punishment and a reprieve.  
“Don’t wait up, Sammy.”  
And he won’t. He’s got work to do. 

 

~*~

After the heavy, metallic clang of the bunker’s front door indicates that Dean’s actually left, Sam leans back, scrubs his hands over his face and permits himself a slow, shuddering breath. The adrenaline from their confrontation is still zinging through him, putting all senses on high alert. But if Sam has experience with anything, it’s to take the remnants of a fight and focus that energy into whatever he needs to do next. Normally that would mean stopping heavy blood flow or stabilizing sprained limbs, but right now, hitting the books with all he’s got while Dean is away is the most pressing issue on his agenda. 

Sam gets up, wills the shaking in his legs away, before pushing the chair back towards the table and collecting most of the books that have accumulated there. Demonology is not what he needs to look at; it’s magic. There have been many famous objects of power in history – Excalibur, Brisingamen, the Glove of Midas – that are fabled to have bestowed their wielders and wearers with special powers or gifts, even though they weren’t inherently supernatural themselves. And there is a deeply rooted tradition in spell-craft using tools to channel energy. Sam needs to study the theory, the mechanics of it if he’s got any hope to understand the dynamics of Dean, the Mark and the Blade. Luckily, he’s living smack dab in the middle of the most comprehensive archive of the supernatural on Earth. And their legacy from the Men of Letters might have been cut off when Henry died before he could pass it on to John, but the society itself had much greater affinity to magic than they’re used to as hunters. The Winchesters have always been comfortable casting spells when it suited their needs, but you don’t really need a profound understanding of the combustion engine to be able to operate a car. It’s time Sam rectified that. The answer is somewhere on those sheer endless shelves and he’s going to find it. 

Sam is burrowed deep in the convoluted essays of a pseudo-scientific anthology of 19th century Mesmerism – because apparently those kooks are the world’s foremost authority on thaumatology, who’d have thought – when the faint metal bang of the latch registers. He’s too engrossed in a very promising paragraph to really process what that means until a pair of hands lands heavy on his shoulders very reminiscent of earlier today, and Dean rasps into his ear:  
“Honey, I’m home.”  
Sam goes very still, with his pen hovering over his notepad, thoughts racing on how to react. Then he decides he needs to stop doing that altogether and instead start acting in ways Dean won’t expect. It’s as much to keep his brother from getting too interested in the new research Sam has buried himself in as to take back some ground, for his own comfort. 

So, Sam shoves himself away from the table, feeling righteously vindictive when Dean has to scramble back to avoid having his toes squashed by the wheels of the chair. He gets up and turns around to lean against the edge of the table, arms crossed over his chest, taking in Dean’s rumpled state with a quirked eyebrow.  
“You know I’m not actually a quaint little housewife waiting for you to come home after a booze and brawl night?”  
Dean grins wide and maliciously, a faux-wounded tone in his voice.  
“Aww, Sammy, and here I thought you’d be at least a little bit anxious for me to come back. After all, you never know what could happen to someone out there all alone, without backup.”

It’s as much a dig at Sam for defying Dean about the fact that he wants him by his side as a partner, as it is a reminder that if anyone is going to need backup, it’s the unlucky guys that might have crossed him in some way. Sam notices the blood crusted on Dean’s knuckles when he rests his hands on the back of the chair, and his vision flickers for a moment. The temperature seems to drop all of a sudden.  
“Did you kill anyone?”  
Dean’s eyebrows climb up his forehead, clearly surprised that Sam would ask the question so directly.  
“’Course not, I’ve got more control than that. And I do know better than to drop bodies so close to home. What do you take me for, an amateur? No, just a couple of thugs looking forward to extensive and unpleasant hospital bills. Had it coming, too.”

Sam tries not to be too obvious about letting go of the breath he’s been holding since he saw the blood. They’re walking a fine line between jovial levity and deadly seriousness, but he needed to know. And if the choice comes down to putting people in the hospital or the morgue, he’d rather Dean go with the former, even if it’s more for practical reasons than out of moral consideration. But he also needs to keep up the pace of their exchange, so that Dean doesn’t have time to get interested in what Sam’s been doing all day, so he tries on his naggiest bitchface for size.  
“Yeah, clearly guys like that would be a complete aberration in the sophisticated places of entertainment you like to patronize.”  
Sam ignores Dean’s muttered “Them’s the perks” and wrinkles his nose at the all too familiar smell wafting over from his brother.  
“Seriously, you reek of cheap whiskey and a back alley blowjob,” even though he probably made it all the way back to their apartment, man of creature comforts that he is, “you know I’m not ever letting you anywhere near me with your dick if you picked up the clap on your way out, right?”

For a second, Dean looks as stunned as Sam feels. It’s not like they’ve never traded barbs like that before, but it’s been a long time since their relationship hasn’t been too strained for it to work. Not since Dean came back a demon, certainly not in light of the epic clusterfuck following the trials. But then the moment breaks when Dean lowers his head between his arms and all Sam can see are his shoulders shaking as he wheezes with laughter. Somehow, the sight loosens a knot that’s been sitting tight and heavy in Sam’s chest forever and makes him feel lighter than he has in months. When Dean finally comes up for air, silent mirth is dancing in his eyes.  
“Well, you know I’m a big boy, I know how to take care of myself. Besides, newly improved demonic physique over here. Nothing tends to stick these days.”  
It’s something Sam hadn’t even considered, but right now that’s just another tidbit of information to be squirreled away in his rapidly firing mind. 

“I mean it. Go take a shower before you stink up the whole place.”  
“Yeah, yeah, alright. You gonna join me?”  
Dean is already half turned, clearly expecting to be shot down with a scathing comeback. And in a fit of temporary insanity and thinking about half-formed plans, Sam finds himself saying:  
“Yeah, I think I will.”

Sam feels strong and vindicated for all of two minutes by how he leaves Dean standing there, gaping, as he brushes by. By the time he has almost reached the bathroom, however, and feels his brother catching up, Sam has predictably developed the most severe case of buyer’s remorse imaginable. He might have gotten one up on Dean for a moment there, but at the same time, he has no idea what he’s opened himself up to. But then, it’s not like the implications of what he said aren’t clear as day. 

Sam opens the door to the washroom, but finds himself rooted to the spot in the middle of the entrance right after. Dean shoulders past him with a knowing grin and kicks off his boots next to the door, throwing his socks on top of them in a deliberately annoying show of sloppiness. Then he sheds his flannel and tugs his t-shirt over his head with one fluid move, the muscles in his back playing under his skin as he bunches up the clothes and carelessly throws them towards the sink. Meanwhile, Sam still hasn’t been able to make himself to move into the room and Dean half turns towards him, smirking.  
“You change your mind?”

Sam takes a deep breath and tells himself to forget his hang-ups over the situation. He got the ball rolling in the first place and if he has any hope to put his half-formed theory to work, he’s going to have to follow through sometime. So Sam shuts off the part of his brain that is clamoring about propriety and this being a very bad idea, and instead lets the renegade out full force.  
“No.”  
He advances on Dean, crowding into his space and starts unbuckling Dean’s belt with crisp, decisive movements. He still can’t look his brother in the eye as he does it, but he’s definitely done backing down from Dean’s challenges. 

“Why Sammy, if I’d known how much this gets you going, I’d have stepped out on you with some random bitch ages ago.”  
“Shut up.”  
Sam hooks his fingers into the waistband of Dean’s jeans and starts tugging them down, pants and all. Sam is so close, he can see his breath raising goose bumps on the exposed skin of Dean’s collarbone. With any other partner, he would follow that up with biting kisses, but he feels completely out of step with the rules of intimacy in this situation. In turn, Dean steps out of his jeans and boxers and kicks them towards the sink too, unabashedly naked now. Sam just catches a glimpse of his half-hard cock before he busies himself with his own belt buckle. It’s enough to turn his cheeks red and warm with shame while a different, more intense heat pools in his belly. 

He almost goes down in a graceless tangle of limbs, trying to simultaneously get out of his shoes and his pants, but for some reason he feels this will go better if he gets that part over with as fast as possible. Sam isn’t prepared for Dean’s hand landing right on his hip, with his thumb stroking down into the V between his thighs. His instinctual reaction is to plant both his hands firmly on Dean’s chest and shove him back. What he hadn’t counted on at all is Dean hitting the wall and accidentally turning the faucet with his elbow so the shower overhead dumps a spray of frigid water on him. He hisses and spits out a volley of unflattering curses.  
“Jeez, Sammy, I already knew shower sex was complicated, but I didn’t think you’d actually go out of your way to make it so.”  
“Is that what we’re doing?”, Sam asks defiantly as he shrugs out of his flannel. 

Dean flashes him a wicked grin, before grabbing a fistful of Sam’s t-shirt and reversing their positions, which makes Sam sputter under the water that’s only just turning lukewarm.  
“Oh yes, I believe that’s exactly where we’re headed.”  
Before Sam can formulate any response, Dean’s mouth is hot on his as a counterpart to the chilly water soaking into his shirt and slithering down his spine. Dean rakes his hands unceremoniously through Sam’s tangled hair, gripping tight to turn his head this way and that until he finds the perfect angle for the kiss, all tongue and teeth, coupled with irreverent abandon. Sam finds his hands skittering over the strongly defined muscles of Dean’s shoulders and back, skin and bones he already knows intimately from endless hours of setting them right and stitching them back together. What makes the touch more hesitant now is the fact that he’s never regarded his brother from the perspective of how deeply sensual and devastatingly attractive he actually is. It’s both heady and disconcerting at the same time.

Dean noses lightly at his jaw and then ducks his head to bite at one of Sam’s raised nipples through his soaked shirt. He closes his lips over the hard nub and sucks at the fabric as if he’s actually chasing the taste of sweat and dusty ink and Sam has to scramble for purchase against the wall, because that move pushes buttons he didn’t even know he had. Dean traces the sensitive area with his tongue a few times, which makes the shivery feeling coil into a ball of restless energy deep inside Sam. He’s still a little weak in the knees when Dean grabs his hips and wrenches him around so he faces the wall and has to throw his hands out to avoid breaking his nose on the slippery tiles. His breath hitches when he feels his brother set his teeth into the lower dip of his spine. But Dean moves upwards from there, bruising bites and open-mouthed kisses, raking his t-shirt further up with deft fingers until it’s just a question of wrestling it over Sam’s head and throwing it to the side in a sodden heap. Now they’re both completely naked. 

Sam screws his eyes shut, unsure what to do with the feeling of his brother’s naked chest plastered to his back as the hot water rushes down on them. But once he feels Dean’s erection brush against his skin for the first time, he can’t stifle the urge to move forward, away.  
“Stay still.”  
The sharp tone books no argument and the hint of supernatural strength in the steely grip Dean has on his hip makes it clear that he doesn’t care about Sam having finger-shaped bruises there later. Sam turns his face into the spray and tries to give himself over, to mute everything with a good helping of the patented Winchester denial. But neither the lingering feeling of aversion nor the creeping arousal let themselves be quieted. Then Dean bites down on the strong muscle between his shoulder and neck, a pointed reminder that his brother doesn’t appreciate him dwelling anywhere but the here and now, in this moment. Sam looks down to where Dean’s hands are slowly stroking up his chest. To his surprise, he sees little white suds floating down over his abdomen. Dean has apparently produced a bar of soap from somewhere and is sliding it over his skin to actually wash away the grime and sweat of the day.

Sam watches transfixed as his brother’s hands start slipping over every inch of his body, exploring familiar territory in a new way. Dean learns the places that make him shiver, set his heart to race. He hadn’t really considered that - even though Dean came back with the clear intention of steering them towards a sexual relationship, Sam’s responses to that kind of stimulation are just as new and unfamiliar to him as they are to Sam. That Dean would take his time, map Sam’s body with intimate, almost tender touches, makes the half-stifled longing for human connection flare again. But he can’t let himself buy into it fully, not when the least nefarious motivation for Dean’s actions is the simple need for physical relief. Still, now that he’s not actively fighting it, Sam can’t deny the slow burn of torturously light touches having the desired effect. When Dean finally closes his fingers around his erection in a sure grip, his breath is coming fast and his hips stutter into the firm touch in search of friction. It’s almost as if he is jerking himself off, only that the hand on his cock is moving in a rhythm he can’t anticipate, adding unexpected twists here and strokes there, which make his toes curl and his breath stick in his throat.

Dean places lazy, unhurried kisses on Sam’s shoulder and neck, sucking on the pulse-point of his jugular as if he can lap up the taste of Sam’s arousal by coaxing tiny pinpricks of blood to the surface. He’s kept a little bit of distance between them, ever since Sam jerked away in that first moment, a strange concession which makes him wonder, fleetingly, how much experience Dean himself has with men and whether he’s still testing his own as well as Sam’s boundaries. This train of thought gets derailed pretty much instantly after though, when Dean makes Sam’s breath stutter with a particular twist on the upstroke and crowds in from behind with his full body. Dean grinds his hips against him in a matching rhythm to the one he sets with his hand. His erection slips along Sam’s crack, between his legs in a mockery of fucking, a warning, a taste, and Sam has no choice but to use what little leverage he has to thrust into the confident grip of Dean’s hand on his cock. Between the sensation of deft fingers jerking him off, and the question of whether the next pass from behind is actually going to be a breach, his heart is racing from fear and anticipation, a phantom pain already lighting up his nerves with illicit pleasure. 

Dean knows it, too, sliding his other hand from Sam’s hip up to claw into the muscle over his heart, where his pulse is hammering so loudly that Sam feels it thud against every one of Dean’s fingers. He’s been pretty quiet so far, but when Dean speeds up slightly, grip just a little tighter, Sam can’t stifle the groan working itself past his lips. He feels Dean’s mouth lift from his skin and hover next to his ear.  
“Not long now, Sammy.”  
Dean’s voice is breathy, subtle, more like he’s consoling Sam before the suffering ends, but Sam feels a tidal wave of lust rise inside of him, washing him towards orgasm as if Dean had commanded him to come right on the spot. Sam’s knees go weak and his hand falls heavy onto Dean’s arm, not so much to make him stop, as to grab onto something solid. It’s the first time he has touched the Mark, skin raised and hot, beating with its own pulse like a second heart. The tendrils of something brush against his mind, a familiar, unsettling sensation, he hasn’t felt in years, but he has just enough time to catalogue the feeling before the pleasure of his climax wipes out all higher brain function. 

Sam comes to with his arms braced against the wall, head hanging low, water battering his shoulders. He watches the water circle the drain at his feet, something repetitive and normal and nothing like the white noise encompassing most of his thoughts. He waits for Dean to make his move, the pain, the humiliation to come full circle. It takes him a few seconds to pull himself together enough to notice there’s no weight at his back, nothing touching his skin but the steady spray of the shower. Instead, he turns his head slightly to find Dean has turned on the showerhead next to his and is languishing under his own spray, fisting himself lazily as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. It’s almost like those nights when they were young and didn’t have any way to blow off steam but for tugging at themselves under the threadbare motel blankets and pretending they were asleep and had no idea what the other was doing one bed over. 

Except it isn’t.  
Because then it was a tacit understanding that silence was the only wall they could put up for themselves and a little bit of privacy. This is Dean putting himself on display. Meeting Sam’s eyes with his own, inky black and smoldering, well aware that their silence now is just a product of all the barriers they’re breaking through at near supersonic-speed. The thunder-clap will follow. Sam holds Dean’s gaze, follows the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows a moan; catalogues all the little sounds and rhythms. He knows, he _can tell_ Dean is close, and in light of all that’s happened, it suddenly seems incredibly inappropriate and strange that he would know that about his brother. He watches Dean bite his lip, sees his shoulders tense and jerk a little faster as he speeds up and then release spread when Dean lets his head fall back with a sharp exhale. 

It’s the answering tug in his groin that finally proves to be too much for Sam to handle, his legs give out and he just has enough wits about him to turn and slide down the tiles into a crouch with his back pressed against the wall, hands covering his eyes and mouth as he tries to parse the surreal quality of his surroundings in the jumbled mess in his head. He almost jerks away violently when he feels Dean’s fingers card into his tangled, wet hair, but his brother’s touch is light, gentling, reminiscent of the time when things could be fixed by warming Spaghetti-O’s or breaking out the Lucky Charms at midnight. Dean’s voice is close, but not breathtakingly so.  
“You know, Sammy, that I only ever break you down to build you back up stronger, don’t you?”  
As if that statement could serve as an explanation for all of Dean’s contrary actions since he’s been back, for defying Sam’s expectations once again by not brutally taking what he could have claimed so easily. In this case, kindness cuts deeper than pain. Because there’s so much of Dean in this and yet there’s … not. 

When Sam doesn’t answer, Dean just strokes lightly over his brow one last time before padding away on almost silent feet. He blinks through his splayed fingers just in time to see his brother whip a towel off the rack and sling it around his hips after a cursory pat down. Dean doesn’t turn around anymore before he opens the door, likely heading towards his room. But Sam doesn’t need to see his face for the smug sense of victory to hit him like one last low blow as he is left shivering under the steady spray of the slowly cooling water. 

Sam doesn’t move for the longest time, a torrent of emotions flowing together into a peculiar kind of white noise. He just sits there, lets the spray of the shower batter his back with heavy drops and watches the water swirl and circle the drain, round and round it goes. Everything that’s happened just now has been washed away, no evidence of what he’s done, of what’s been done _to_ him remains, but Sam still can’t bring himself to even contemplate his next move. He’s very aware that it’s immature and not at all productive to just sit there and have a silent freak-out that doesn’t even really feel like freaking out. But knowing that rationally and getting his body do something, anything, are two very different kettle of fish right now. 

When the near-endless supply of hot water the bunker seems to have reached its limit and the spray turns icy, that’s his cue to move. He straightens to turn off the water quickly, shivering a little, even though the air in the room is still pretty much humid and hot. Sam takes a towel from the rack, losing himself for a moment in the softness of the slowly soaking material against his skin. They’ve each had their own reactions to establishing a home base at the bunker. Dean got memory foam, Sam bought towels. Something to make him remember that they weren’t just passing through, here, even if he was reluctant to admit it at first. This is the place where they built a life together that consisted of more than just driving towards the next job. Sam wonders what will happen to that if there’s really no way of getting Dean back to human, or if they can never go back to who they were, even if there is. He clenches his fist in the towel wrapped around his chest as he thinks about it, because there’s not much of a question there after all. 

The mirror is fogged up from the steam and Sam hesitates a moment, the desire to keep himself in the dark about what has or hasn’t changed about him a strong current. But that’s the coward’s way out. He swipes his hand over the cool mirror glass in an expansive gesture before he can think about it any longer. He half expects the man looking back at him to have changed in some fundamental way. It only makes sense that his actions, the shame, his desperation have carved new paths into his face. It should have left a mark on his body that will lead others to see the depths he’s willing to go to in this quest to keep the last shards of his family, of the only person that tethers him here, from falling through the cracks. 

The mirror is brutally honest, though, and doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Sure, he looks tired and worn, dark circles under his eyes and odd bruises here and there, a reminder of Dean’s sometimes less than careful touch during those past couple of days. But other than that, there’s no outward sign that he’s a different man from who he was yesterday or a week before or a month. A man who would apparently give up all principles and morality, repeat his old mistakes and endanger the very people he’s given his life to protect instead of doing the right thing and putting the monster down. For the love of a man who is stripped bare of all care for the very foundation of their way of life, just because he doesn’t know how to be this close to anyone else. White-hot rage curls in Sam’s belly, and he wants to bury his fist into the face in the mirror, have the shards rip into his knuckles and create a real, tangible source for the pain. 

He takes a deep breath and doesn’t, though. Sam remembers well enough the last conversation he’s had with himself in a broken mirror, recalls in the utter powerlessness in the face of Lucifer’s diatribe, with the devil trying to win him over while his fiery touch was already clawing its way into Sam’s soul in a taste of what was to come. He isn’t bound and powerless now. Even though his choices are less than ideal, Dean left him an opening to exercise his own will. 

His brother enjoys toying with him and teasing, sure, to pretend at the chase, but if Dean’s actions have revealed anything by now it's that he wants Sam to come to him. Into the trap. And that’s exactly what Sam needs to do, with plans to drag him back to humanity kicking and screaming. This pity party has gone on long enough, and Sam is done blindly stomping into the schemes where Dean has already thought two moves ahead. And if Sam has to stop worrying about whether or not he’s been harboring an unhealthy attraction towards his brother for a lot longer than this dance has been going on and use it instead, that’s what he’ll damned well do. 

Sam curls his hands around the sink until the knuckles turn white and stares down his reflection. He remembers a thread of magical theory he’d been following right before Dean came back, which led in a promising direction. It was a paragraph about engraved runes on ancient weapons, and the way the interplay of power gave those magical artifacts something like a mind of their own, an influence over their wielder. Sam knows in his guts that this is the thread he needs to pull on some more to find what he’s been looking for. Now he just needs to distract Dean enough to keep him from noticing that whatever it is he wouldn’t want Sam to find about the Mark is likely right under his nose. Sam pushes himself upright and towels away the last drops of water and, with that, shoves any doubt over what he’s been doing to the back of his mind.  
He’s done being played. 

~*~

Sam debates for a moment whether taking his research to his room is a good idea. He doesn’t want to draw Dean’s attention to the line of inquiry he’s pursuing by singling out certain books. But he decides that getting on with it is more important. The risk of exposure is much smaller now that Dean has a victory to savor for the rest of the night. Sam dresses and then quietly filches the relevant tomes from the reading hall. He makes sure to spread some of his notes around, so they don’t leave conspicuously empty spaces. Then he retreats to his room, dims the lights and settles in for a long night. 

He has to slog through another two chapters on spiritual hysteria, before he hits pay dirt in a couple of obscure footnotes. Cross-referencing their sources leads to an article on the conduit power between magical artifacts and invocational scripts. It describes how an enchantment is be crafted by infusing certain runes or symbols with the power of a specific intent. But in order for the spell to gain the ability to be re-usable or to transfer it from the original caster to someone else – who might be entirely non-magical and therefore unable to cast it themselves – it has to be anchored in some way. 

Sam is familiar enough with ritual anchors: Gather a specific set of ingredients, arrange them in a particular way, follow the steps and recite the incantation until the spell is complete. It’s only logical that, with the right inscription, such power could be locked inside an everyday object that could be easily transported or used as a weapon. Belatedly, Sam realizes that their demon-killing knife is probably built on exactly the same principle. 

What he hadn’t been aware of, however, even though it makes perfect sense when the article goes into more detail, is how the nature of the artifact – the focus item as the author calls it – might influence the way the aspect of its power is expressed. A tracking spell will be more effective on something like a pendulum than a slab of stone; a glamour on a vanity item or accessory. Destructive magic, of course, works best tied to a weapon. But ultimately, most runic or symbol driven magic would have more than one possible use. 

So assuming the Mark of Cain is the script and the First Blade the focus item that simultaneously anchors and unlocks the power (leaving them both mostly inert until they’re put together), Sam has a pretty good line on how the magic works. The problem remains that in Dean’s case, the script isn’t tied directly to a magical artifact but a person, and, from what Sam can put together, that makes him part of the spell. Which means just separating him from the Blade is not enough, the Mark will always compel him to seek it out again. Another possibility would be to destroy the Blade, but Sam is quite sure that – given how Cain hadn’t done it himself – the Blade would be resistant to most ordinary means of destruction, and he doesn’t quite have the fires of Mount Doom handy to melt the One Ring. Besides, the article also mentions how destroying a focus item can be tricky, because it’s liable to destabilize the power of the spell and produce a serious backdraft of magical energy. The last thing Sam wants is to destroy the Blade and then have Dean be consumed by the power of the Mark until there really is nothing left of his brother. 

And Sam is under no illusion that trying to take a hot poker to the Mark would produce any other result than a lethal fight and likely the same kind of magical meltdown. If it was that easy to get rid of the Mark, Cain would have done it the moment he went straight. The only other thing that could possibly separate Dean from the Mark that Sam can think of is taking off his brother’s arm. The thought alone makes Sam want to take his fist to the wall until his knuckles break. Besides, there’s no guarantee that the Mark and Dean being a demon hasn’t altered his body in such a way that it would be a futile attempt. Sam definitely is not going to take the chance. 

The fact that he found a reliable basis to understand the power at work has brought him no closer to separating Dean from the unholy influence of the Mark or getting his humanity back. It makes Sam want to scream and throw all the books against the wall until they break apart at their spines and flutter down into the useless heap of trash that they are. His hands shake from barely controlled rage when he makes himself continue to turn the pages, vision blurry with unshed, angry tears. 

In his agitated state, he almost misses it, but one of the last pages mentions a vague account of something called transference. An account of some tribal shamans using different charms bound together – in a bracelet for example – to infuse them with a certain amount of raw power and guiding that into different expressions of the magic depending on which charm of the bundle they brought to the fore, offence, obfuscation, protection. All rolled in one for easy access and the advantage of speedy tactical adjustments. Sam’s heart begins to pound faster when his mind toys with the idea of more than one focus item. Maybe, just maybe, if he can find a way to subvert the link between the Mark and the Blade and insert a new anchor that ties to the Mark’s power and represents a different, less volatile aspect than a weapon, it might turn out to be controllable for Dean’s human side. 

The idea is rough, dependent on various factors he can barely hope to figure out in advance, but it’s better than the steaming pile of nothing he’s been able to come up with so far. Sam rubs his eyes when the turmoil of the day finally catches up with him and decides that sleeping on it is a good way to develop it further. It’s more likely he’ll have any luck coming up with a more fleshed-out plan if he looks at it with fresh eyes in the morning. So he slides the books and papers underneath the bed to make them less obtrusive and wraps himself in his blanket. 

~*~

Sam doesn’t sleep very long, his various findings run in the back of his mind constantly, even in the quiet of slumber. Nevertheless, he wakes up with new energy, and a plan of what he needs to figure out today. He’s out in the reading hall well before Dean even stirs, scouring the Men of Letters-files for the elusive phenomenon of transference. It’s not exactly a rare subject in theory, but the practical applications are hardly explained or even mentioned in detail. Many of the descriptions just illustrate how it makes spells unstable and is incredibly difficult to accomplish rather than getting into the actual details. Sam has never been one to back down from just ‘difficult’, but he curses silently at another scholar who just glosses over the issue in his writings, since he’s already read five more accounts just like it. 

He’s so engrossed in his research, though, that he doesn’t even notice Dean finally showing up until nimble fingers brush aside the hair at the nape of his neck and teeth rake down the sensitive skin right behind his ear. He startles, but before he can truly think about it, his usual reaction to Dean’s distractions slips out:  
“Not now, Dean.”  
Sam tenses in the wake of his own words, fully expecting Dean to make a big deal out of being shot down like this. But Dean doesn’t get aggressive or demand attention. Instead, the touch on his neck vanishes, and when Sam looks up after finishing the paragraph, Dean is nowhere to be found. 

Unease settles in his gut, because deflecting Dean’s unwanted attentions shouldn’t have been that easy. Sam waits a couple of heartbeats for something to happen, but when Dean doesn’t pop out of a corner like a boogieman after a minute, he goes back to the research he needs to complete as fast as possible. 

Sam buries himself in the papers again, hunting down a promising reference on magical energy signatures that he might be able to apply to the transference problem. He means to stay alert to his surroundings, but Dean apparently relies on supernatural stealth to materialize next to him just a few minutes later. What surprises Sam even more than the impromptu appearance is the steaming mug of coffee Dean sets down next to him. He looks up at Dean, stunned, but his brother has already turned his back to round the table and throw himself into his customary chair opposite Sam. When the delicious aroma tickles Sam’s nose with the promise of caffeine, he grabs the mug and takes a cautious sip, finding it just the way he likes. 

He flicks his eyes up at Dean in askance, but finds that his brother has flipped open a magazine and gives no indication he’s even aware of Sam at all. Reluctantly, Sam goes back to reading, always tracking Dean’s movements in the periphery of his vision, but there’s nothing but the occasional rustle of a page being turned. 

The essay he’s found talks about stabilizing the properties of ingredients in magic by taking advantage of so-called congenial energies. It seems that the same principle governing the different reactions one gets from mixing chemicals – ranging from fizzling to volatile – also applies to magic. Consequently, if Sam were to try and replace the First Blade as the focus of the Mark’s power with something else, it would have to be an item carrying a congenial energy signature for the transfer to have any hope of being successful. 

“Looks like you’ve found something pretty interesting there, Sammy. Care to share?”  
Sam’s head snaps up and he fumbles his pen, cursing himself for letting his guard down once again around Dean. He knew Dean’s backing off was too good to be true and with his unfiltered reaction, Sam has definitely shown his hand.  
“It’s nothing relevant, really.”  
Dean smirks and throws the magazine onto the table, leaning closer.  
“Try that again with a straight face. You’ve been tearing through files and folders all morning, no way you’re not looking for something specific. I _know_ you, Sammy.”

The way Dean’s voice curls around the words like soft velvet covering unforgiving steel makes Sam shiver, a feeling of hot and cold seizing his body at once. He debates playing for time, keeping up the pretense of having found nothing of value. But even before he’s finished that thought, he knows it’s never going to work. Dean’s right, he knows all of Sam’s tells. And just because his brother doesn’t have a particular fondness for research, it is by no means proof that he’s not intelligent – or observant. 

Sam is going to have to give him something, right now. He throws his pen down and looks over his notes, at a loss. Dean hasn’t moved from his casual sprawl at all, but his eyes are fixed on Sam with a single-minded focus that almost burns. 

Sam buries his face in his hands to escape that shadow-tinted look for a moment and gather his thoughts, when inspiration strikes. He’s got a piece of information that’s quite useless to him, but big enough that it might appease Dean and detract from the actual information he’s pursuing. It’s time to sacrifice a rook to protect the king. He lets a calculated amount of the anguish he felt at the realization seep into his voice to give Dean’s ego a leg up.  
“You’re right. I have found something. At least, I think it’s safe to assume the general theory applies to your special circumstances as well.”

Sam pauses, grasping for the best way to frame his conclusion while Dean cocks his head in the customary way that says ‘get on with it’.  
“With the amount of raw power leashed to make the First Blade strong enough to take out a Knight of Hell, there’s no way to destroy either the Blade or the Mark without the magical equivalent of a nuclear meltdown ripping you apart and probably wiping out the better part of whatever’s in your immediate vicinity at the time.”

Dean looks surprised for all of a second – whether from the revelation itself or because Sam actually volunteered the information, Sam can’t tell. But a cruel smile spreads on Dean’s lips in moments when he realizes the implications.  
“So, you have tried to sneak something past me. Tsk, tsk, Sam, I think I told you not to do that.”  
Dean doesn’t lean in any further and his tone is still light, but there’s an edge of subtle menace that radiates out from him now. 

Possible retaliation for the attempt of withholding the information from Dean is something Sam has anticipated, but he might be able to play up the despair convincingly enough to satisfy Dean’s new taste for emotional pain. What he’s found is promising, after all, but if he manages to put a plan together, it will be nothing more than a Hail Mary attempt. Either way, it’s much more important now to head Dean off at the pass, to give this plan even so much as a chance.  
“And you knew I would try regardless. It’s half the reason you’ve set me this task, isn’t it? So we could do more of this cat and mouse game of me trying to outmaneuver you, and you taking your pleasure by chasing me into dead ends. Driving the point home that short of you giving it to someone voluntarily, there is no way to take the Mark without killing you.”

He feels his voice crack, and his control fray with every word, walking a tightrope between manipulation and pain, but this is not the place to protect his own heart. Still, his defenses are worn thin from the game. The next words burst out of him, before he has time to consider the consequences.  
“Really, Dean, what do you _want_ from me?”

He can’t help but flinch when Dean surges up, flipping the black and swiping a good portion of the books in front of him from the table.  
”I want you to stop looking for something that’s gone and see what’s _right in front of you_!”  
Sam stares wide-eyed at his brother, who seems as unchecked and candid as he’s been since he showed up back at the bunker. He has no idea how to react for a moment, unsettled by the way Dean rewrites the playbook constantly before throwing it out completely from one second to the next. 

“I… I don’t understand.”  
“Can you imagine that apart from being stronger, faster, less breakable, I just feel _better_ like this, and that you might too, if you just came down from your high horse already?”  
Sam’s hackles rise and he finds himself tensing up, ready for what, he’s not quite sure.  
“Who says it is a good thing, huh? All the sacrifice and the pain. What is it worth in the grand scheme of things? Isn’t this the opportunity to stop thinking about everyone else first and take something for ourselves instead?”

“And what if that thing I want most for myself is my brother, back, whole… human? Would you give up the Blade, resist the call of the Mark, if I asked you to?”  
Sam doesn’t remember getting out of his chair, but he finds himself squaring off against Dean, who has moved closer around the corner of the table, at full height.  
“You know that’s not how it works.”  
“Then why? Why bring it up at all?”

Dean takes another step closer, utterly unimpressed by Sam’s imposing posture.  
“Maybe because I want you to stop pining for the pathetic, whiny piece of shit I don’t want to be anymore. He fucked up everything he touched, saving the world, saving his friends, his family. It doesn’t get to me now, I don’t have to care. So why would you want him back?”  
Dean spits the last bit with so much venom that it strikes Sam to the core. Still, he surprises himself most of all by rearing back and socking Dean square in the jaw. 

He watches with a sinking feeling as his brother’s head snaps to the side from the unexpected punch. Dean thumbs at the corner of his lips where Sam has split his knuckles on his teeth.  
“Shouldn’t have done that, Sammy.”  
Sam turns his mounting horror into righteous anger, because the only way through is forward, now.  
“Don’t talk like that about yourself, about us. You wanna say you screwed up? Fine, you did. You put my life before the world. You betrayed my trust, and people paid for it. You jumped at the chance to take the Mark without a single thought for the consequences, because, once again, it seemed like the only way out, and you always put yourself last. But, guess what? We didn’t choose this life and its crappy options, we didn’t choose the world on our shoulders, and we are never going to get it right. You see what’s in front of you, you make your choices best as you can, and you work with what you’ve got, Dean.”

“Is that so? Well, what I see right now is that you’ve obviously got some stuff you need to get out of your system, and I owe you payback.”  
This time, Dean follows up the gripe with a fist that lands right on the fragile part of Sam’s cheekbone and makes bright pain explode all over his face, which is how they suddenly end up trading vicious blows with each other. 

It’s like all the pent up energy and tension that’s been mounting for as long as they’ve been confined in the bunker is coiling even tighter as they exchange kicks and jabs, anticipating each other’s moves from years of sparring. They are evenly matched, even though Sam knows that Dean’s demonic strength should give him an edge. The realization that Dean must be holding back, still doesn’t take him seriously, stokes the fire in Sam’s core, makes his movements sharp and mean. 

He wills for Dean to let go, taunts him with underhanded moves that play on Sam’s superior height and bulk. His brother has always hated that when they went up against each other even though he has no trouble at all countering it. Dean doesn’t rise to the bait, he just drives Sam back with a couple of fast fist combinations, until Sam unexpectedly hits a wall at his back and has to switch tactics to avoid getting cornered. He uses the momentum when Dean follows him to deflect the next blow, grab Dean’s arm instead and drag him off balance to throw him into the wall and effectively switch their positions. 

He catches Dean’s other arm, slamming them into the wall and gets in Dean’s face.  
“If you really want payback, why don’t you take it? You’ve danced around this long enough – Stop. Playing. Games.”  
Sam wants this clash to mean something to Dean, wants some evidence that it gets under his brother’s skin in the way he got a glimpse of when Dean lashed out with words first. But all he gets in return for his forceful speech is Dean tilting his head and smirking:  
“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport. We fight, we fuck. Tell you a secret – there’s not that much of a difference when you do it right.”

Dean leans close and rolls his hips against Sam’s where he didn’t even realize his thigh was practically pressed into the V of Dean’s legs, allowing him to feel just how excited his brother is from the fight.  
“Oh, and Sammy? Wanna know something else? Remember all those years ago, when I first came to get you after Dad had vanished? Boy, I was so proud of you, the way you came out swinging, still sharp and on edge, and when I had you pinned under me, there was this moment when I thought ‘I want this’ in a no good, very bad way. Imagine, if I’d been what I am now, Jess would have gotten quite an eyeful, wouldn’t she?”

Sam is utterly taken aback by the surprising turn of the conversation, and the blunder is all Dean needs to slip his grasp and change their positions again, pinning Sam to the wall instead, but never losing contact. 

He says, “That’s how it should have been, always. You and me against the world, and nothing between us.”  
“You know that’s not how it is,” Sam whispers against Dean’s lips, since his brother has come so close that they’re almost kissing.  
“But it can be. It should be.”  
Sam wonders if that is the deeper kernel of knowledge about Dean’s motivations he’s been looking for all along. He knows, of course, it’s not that easy by far. Half of their unusual closeness is responsible for the putting the world in peril in the first place and the other half is muddled by old hurts, betrayals, the ends always justifying the means, and he should stop. Break this vicious circle. He should bury them in here, before their legacy becomes a trail of bodies that is longer than the line of people they’ve saved. 

But Dean is right here in front of him, alive, breathing, if not exactly who he was before, and Sam can’t bring himself to do it. No matter how much they hurt each other or those around them, when it comes down to the choice between Dean and everything else; there is no question as to which way the chips will fall. What remains is whether he’s prepared to follow that path to its inevitable conclusion. 

Sam finds himself trembling at a precipice, body and soul yearning to close what little distance remains between them, even though the mind rebels. And Dean, the bastard, doesn’t take away the choice this time, just waits with a deceptively calm tension locked in his stance. Sam has crossed the line before, all but creating the opportunity in the shower, but that was also a means to an end, a testing of the waters, a yielding to an outside force. 

What he’s facing now is the choice between propriety, morality and the kind of intimate closeness Sam will never again have the chance of achieving with anyone else. He knows Dean down to the marrow in his bones. No one can compete, and for all the reasons this is wrong, it’s also bewilderingly right. So it’s just the dip of his chin, a minute puff of breath that tips him over the edge as he fits his lips against Dean’s in a kiss that is too tentative and too tender for the violence that ruled their actions until moments ago. 

He draws back again almost immediately, heart pounding from the forbidden thrill. However, Dean has finally reached the end of his patience and follows him in the fraction of a second, keeping their mouths locked together with a harder, more passionate edge. They don’t explore the same way they did the first time kissing, but there is still a dance in it, changing rhythms and angles in a quest for more, better, deeper, bodies crowding into each other, and Sam almost losing himself in the slow, subtle grind of Dean’s hips. Sam barely notices how his brother’s grip has loosened, but finds himself clutching his shoulders soon enough, holding on as their mouths move against each other, open and more aggressive now. 

Sam is so dazed by the sensation that he barely notices how Dean backs away for a moment, feels his hands roam on his back under his shirt. He chases his brother’s jaw when Dean turns slightly, stubble rough against his sensitive lips. It almost brings him out of the daze, facing the reality of what he’s doing, but Sam is tired, so tired of being at arm’s length from everybody he considers family and a league away from everyone else around them, the people who have no understanding of their life and suffering at all. 

So he nips at the seam of Dean’s soft lips, coaxing them to open back up for him, and he feels the ghost of a smile tug at the edge of Dean’s mouth before he turns back towards Sam and dives into the kiss. Sam draws him in, their tongues meeting, and the taste that fills Sam’s mouth is electric and addictive, a metallic sting going to his head to light it up with a pleasure he hasn’t felt in years. It’s only when the feeling travels down into his body on well-worn paths that have been scorched open and purified and healed into more than just physical scars time and again that he frowns at the strange familiarity of it that has nothing to do with the previous times he’s kissed his brother. 

His eyes fly open when the realization clicks into place – copper, earth, brimstone and something intangible, but powerful – and his tongue swipes over the spot where the inside of Dean’s lips is split by sharp teeth. Sam is horrified by the terrible want thrumming through his body that urges him to drag his brother closer, gnaw and bite at the wound until it opens up, so he can drink until he is overflowing with strength. His hands spasm on Dean’s shoulders, whether to draw him in or push him away, Sam has no idea, because he is caught in the storm of sensation – one drop of his brother’s blood holds more power than any demon he’s ever drunk – and the feeling of something that is purely Dean burning through his veins. 

Sam is locked up in Dean’s infernal embrace, unable to let go, unwilling to hold on, when something else slithers in along the paths that are being carved open again by the demonic power of Dean’s blood. It brushes against Sam’s mind, inconceivably old, primal, unchecked and curious, but also overwhelming and utterly alien. It feels like the abyss, staring back, which finally creates the momentum for Sam to wrench himself away from Dean’s lips and shove his brother back with a move that is not entirely made up of physical strength. 

Sam futilely rubs his hand over his mouth in an effort to chase away the taste, but it’s too late, for he can already feel the hooks sinking into his mind, he absently notices the tremor in his hand, eyes then drawn to the rapid heartbeat hammering at Dean’s throat, and the faint shine of deeper red coating his lips. Dean grins broadly, a mix between delight and viciousness, but when he tries to step closer again, Sam throws up his hand and bellows:  
“No.”

Dean stops cold, but the fact that Sam doesn’t know whether he did it of his own volition or came up against an invisible barrier is already enough to send his pulse thundering in his ears. When Dean opens his mouth to say something, he snarls:  
“Shut up! Don’t you… I can’t… I can’t believe, you…”  
Trying to make sense of what just happened while wrestling to control the newly released psychic energy that is whipping into a hurricane inside his head takes all of Sam’s faculties. He closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his temples in an effort to center himself. 

“Come on, Sammy, you can’t think this wasn’t a possibility all this time.”  
He didn’t, well, he did, but Sam’s lived with the residual tendrils of his addiction for such a long time now, cycled through so many circles of supernatural wounds and healing, that it’s faded in his mind into just one of the things that are part of him every day. Dean has caught Sam completely off guard when he shouldn’t have been. Either way, he can’t deal with his brother right now with the turmoil going on in his head.  
“Get out.”

Dean obviously isn’t fazed at all.  
“Oh, Sammy, you don’t mean that, do you? Are you really going to leave me hanging like this?”  
Sam can’t help but pack a punch when he opens his eyes and all but screams:  
“Get out. GET OUT. Leave me alone!”  
This time he feels the familiar outward shove, sees Dean stumbling backwards as if he was only half brazed for it and for the first time, he witnesses his brother’s cocky, self-assured attitude crack to the point of Dean looking like he isn’t quite certain he’s still a couple of steps ahead anymore. There is a beat of silence between them, before Dean let’s go off the tension and slides that cocky grin back onto his face.  
“Alright, alright, I’m going to let you blow off some of that steam on your own. If you want another taste, I trust you’ll figure out how to find me. But I suggest you don’t wait too long to make up your mind, who knows what I’ll find myself getting into otherwise.”

He follows Dean’s retreating back out to the map room with narrowed eyes, holding himself together by the skin of his teeth until he hears the telltale clang of the bunker’s heavy iron door. Then he lets go with a bitten off sob, falling to his knees with heaving breaths. Sam barely holds himself up with trembling arms while the churning pain in his head slowly settles. He stares at the floor with unseeing eyes until he notices the little droplets spotting the marble and a careless swipe under his nose comes away red with blood. 

Sam shudders lightly and sits on his haunches, back pressed against the wall and his head thrown back to lessen the blood flow. The bleeding has already stopped, mostly, but Sam still feels the thick liquid slide into the back of his throat. His blood tastes metallic, warm, human… just barely. Because among the unexpected carnage of the past few minutes, Sam has managed one thing that Dean definitely did not anticipate with his move. 

Against all odds, Sam happened to find the missing link in his plans. Discovered the one thing that carries what is as close to a congenial energy with the Mark of Cain as he is ever going to get. Somewhere in the furthest recesses of Hell, Lucifer is laughing himself silly if he has any inkling of what’s going on up here. Because the last piece of the puzzle that Sam needs to attempt to sever the Mark’s connection with the Blade and give it a new focus was in front of him the whole time. 

Sam slowly drags himself up and over to the table, where most of his research is in disarray from Dean’s earlier outburst. But he knows exactly what he’s looking for, now.  
A ritual, a spell, anything to enable him to bind his own body, the vessel of the Serpent, to the power of the First Knight of Hell. 

~*~

A mix of fatalistic serenity and fatigue washes over Sam when he rests his hands over the mess of paper and binders on the table, but he doesn’t have time to give himself a break. The longer he doesn’t have Dean in his sights – no matter how much he doesn’t want to see his face right now – the more likely something is going to go wrong before he can find a fix. He carelessly swipes away another drop of blood from his nose before it can fall down onto his notes and starts to sift through them. He hasn’t managed to find an actual hands-on description of a transference ritual in his research so far but remembers a cross-referenced text he’d marked down as promising. It hadn’t sounded like it would be much use to him before he figured out the actual object he wanted to substitute for the Blade, but considering that issue has since disappeared, now is exactly the right time to check it out. 

Sam finally finds the paper on the floor right next to his chair and takes it down to the Men of Letters-Index to find the corresponding text. The storage code leads him into a part of the library that clearly predates his grandfather’s contemporaries by at least a couple of decades, a maze of back rooms he hasn’t had the chance to spend much time in to date. The dust is thick on the archive boxes, and he resists the urge to blow it up in a cloud, delicately tugging the designated box from the shelf instead. It turns out to be not full of files or tomes, but a bunch of little notebooks, stacked for storage convenience more than order and it takes him awhile to track down the right one. 

They all appear to have been written by the same hand, travel logs from vaguely Middle Eastern locations interspersed with tightly written, lengthy descriptions in neat cursive. Sam sits down on a little stool next to the shelf, strangely reluctant to take his find out into the communal areas of the bunker, even though the myopic light of the single naked bulb in the room doesn’t make it any easier to decipher the handwriting. 

The travelling Man of Letters talks about his conversations with priests, shamans more like, who relate practices of attuning their bodies to the energy of the earth by way of meditation and carving or branding their skin with runes. When Sam reads that they sometimes also channel those powers into objects, totems to assist with healing, for luck or for keeping evil spirits at bay, his fingers begin to shake turning the page. He knows he’s hit pay dirt when his eyes fly over an addendum that some of them use a mantra, holy words to help focus the mind and open the spirit. The line that’s transcribed is short and unobtrusive, but most of the old, powerful spells are. And upon further inspection, it turns out to be Enochian, or at least close enough that Sam has confidence in its authenticity. He lets the little notebook sink into his lap with slack hands. It looks like he has managed to compile all the theoretical elements of a solution after all. What he needs now is a plan of action. 

~*~

Sam slumps down into his customary chair at the research tables, putting the glass of whiskey down on the paper he hasn’t bothered to clean up. The burn of the liquid slowly fades going down, and he doesn’t chase it, well aware that he will have to face an entirely different kind of burn in short order. He throws back the rest of the shot before thumbing on his phone to scroll through his contact list. His finger hovers over the name for a couple of seconds, mind suddenly blank on what he’s going to say, but this conversation is hardly going to be the most difficult part of this.

It rings so long that Sam becomes anxious of having to go out and tracking down his brother himself after all. But on the last ring before it would have switched to voicemail, the call connects with a click that sounds overly loud in Sam’s ears.  
“Yeah?”  
There’s a lump in his throat all of the sudden, keeping him from speaking. After he’s swallowed it down, however, the words that come out feel easy.  
“Come home.”

Dean is quiet at the other end of the line, miscellaneous sounds of a bar filtering in, but it calms Sam that things sound like business as usual instead of screams and mayhem. Not that screams and mayhem aren’t business as usual in a lot of bars they frequent. He snaps his attention back to his brother’s slow breaths, hand tightening around the phone.  
“Are you sure, Sammy? Can’t go back on it this time.”

Sam looks down at his shaking hand lying on his thigh. If this goes wrong, there’s a very real possibility he’s about to let loose a thoroughly pissed-off demonic Winchester on the world… or two.  
He is most definitely not sure.  
“I’m sure. I want you here.”  
“You _want_ me back? Is that what you’re saying?”  
Sam feels his grip on the phone go slippery with sweat and he wants to curse Dean for making him spell it out, but if he can’t even handle telling his brother that he’s offering to have sex with him, there’s no way he’ll be able to navigate the real thing.  
“Yes, I _want_ you. Now, will you get your ass back here already?” 

He can hear the smirk in Dean’s voice as he listens to him swallow his drink and set the glass down on the bar with an audible clink.  
“Why yes, Sammy, your wish is my command. Give me twenty, alright?”  
“Fine.”

Sam cuts off the call and puts his cellphone on the table with shaking fingers, before grabbing the bottle and topping off his glass with a very generous three fingers. He brings it to his lips and wonders, if he should go on and strip to present himself on his bed like a virgin sacrifice. He snorts into his drink at the thought and decides that it’s really not them, even though Dean would probably have a hearty laugh about it before jumping him. Their way of life has made it par for the course that they know much more about each other’s intimate histories and sexual exploits than would be common for brothers anyway. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. Meanwhile, Sam tries to establish some semblance of the meditative headspace he’s going to need for his plan to work and quit thinking about how he’s preparing to sleep with his brother in order to get close enough to Dean to try and curb his demonic affliction. 

~*~

Sam comes up from the depth of his thoughts with the clang of the bunker door, taking a deep breath while he waits for Dean to show his face. His brother ambles up into the reading hall after a couple of minutes, but instead of coming right in, he leans against the doorjamb of the arch. They size each other up, neither willing to make the first move, and Sam wonders if this is just as weird for Dean, now that the wait is over, and the challenge is done. He drags their little game of chicken out until the silence is so thick you can cut it with a knife, waiting for Dean to get on with it, but instead of strutting up and turning on his charm, his brother stays right where he is, until he finally opens his mouth.  
“What changed your mind?”

Trust Dean to trot out either his own insecurities or his interrogation skills at the most inopportune moment. He’s almost tempted to gripe about all the talking killing the mood, but in this case, Sam decides to cut to the chase and go with the truth, or at least as much of it as he can afford.  
“I’m tired, Dean. Tired of fighting and of trying to live up to the standards of a society we haven’t been part of for a very long time. You’re the one person in the world who’s been so many things to me, I don’t see why we couldn’t be once more if we both want it. And if I can’t have you back in all the ways I’d like, well then I’m going to damn well take my own advice and work with what I’ve got.”

That’s when Dean unsticks himself from the wall and strides over to where Sam is still sitting in his chair, looking up defiantly at his brother as Dean speaks:  
“Is that so.”  
Sam is well aware how crucial it is that he sells his motivations, because there’s no way Dean will let his guard down otherwise, especially with the way he all but threw his brother out just hours ago.  
“Well, this is what you wanted, isn’t it? Me admitting that there’s more to this, to us. And now you decide to look the gift horse in the mouth?”  
Dean settles his hands on the armrests of Sam’s chair, deliberately boxing him in.  
“It’s not really the horse’s mouth that I’m after, now, is it?”

Sam marvels at the irony of Dean continuing to play his word games, keeping them from getting anywhere. Putting him in the position of having to be the one driving the action no matter how conflicted he is about it. Still, for his plan to work, Sam needs them to get this show on the road, which is why he grabs the lapels of Dean’s shirt and drags him down for a hot and biting kiss before drawing back a little to whisper against his lips:  
“Did you come here just to talk or are you going to do something useful with that mouth of _yours_?”  
“Well, I guess now I have to, don’t I?”  
The grin Sam feels Dean’s lips stretch into against his own tells him exactly how much this whole interaction has been a test. Dean’s not going to throw them into bed without being wary of what might be motivating Sam, but he knew that going in. There’s an ace up Sam’s sleeve that will hopefully distract him enough, never mind that it’s an integral part of the ritual Sam’s going to attempt. 

Dean continues their kiss with more fervor, sliding his hand up from Sam’s knee, spreading his fingers into the crease of his thigh without actually touching any really intimate places. The teasing movement is enough to make Sam grow hard in an embarrassingly short time, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about feigning interest in the actual sex part of the proceedings. Still – when Dean moves closer, thumb brushing more deliberately against the denim where Sam’s cock is lying heavy against his thigh, he jerks and bangs his elbow painfully against the armrest. He separates from the kiss with a gasp and grabs Dean’s wrist.  
“Dean, wait, I… I’m… if we’re… I’m not doing this out here. Like this.”  
A frown flashes across Dean’s face at the interruption, but then he grins broadly.  
“You’re right. We’ve got several perfectly serviceable beds all over the place, no reason not to do this properly. Come on.”

He drags Sam out of the chair with careless strength and tugs him in the direction of the living quarters, clearly angling for Sam’s room, which is closer. Sam doesn’t protest, he’d much rather do this in his own familiar space, but he hesitates in the doorway nonetheless.  
“Sammy?”  
He lets the moment stretch just a little longer for Dean to assume he’s got jitters before dropping his ace in the hole.  
“You got a knife on you?”  
Sam glances at Dean’s belt where he usually keeps his switchblade so his brother realizes that he’s not talking about the Blade. 

Dean raises an eyebrow before he answers:  
“Yeah. Sure.”  
Sam looks straight back at him and nods.  
“Good. You’re going to need it.”  
With the words, Sam steps towards the bed, shrugging his flannel off his shoulders. He watches Dean freeze in the door out of the corner of his eyes, while he balls up the shirt and chucks it into the laundry corner. Satisfied that he’s thrown his brother off balance again, Sam turns and opens his belt buckle. He meets Dean’s eyes with a challenging look, not exactly making a show of his undressing, but keeping his movements slow and deliberate. When he tugs the t-shirt over his head, Dean finally speaks:  
“When you said you wanted me, I didn’t expect that you meant the whole package, given what just happened after I first offered you a taste.”

Sam toes off his boots and tries to keep his face entirely neutral when he lets his hands fall to the waistband of his jeans.  
“Well, if I’m going to be taking up habits again, might as well make it count, right?”  
He slides his jeans and underwear all the way off with a nonchalant confidence he certainly doesn’t feel on the inside. When he straightens up again, he watches Dean’s eyes track his movements, jump to different parts of his body. Sam knows his own body and its appeal well enough, but it’s strange and oddly arousing to see Dean, who’s witnessed him growing up, growing into it, appraise him with such obvious desire. He sits down on the bedspread, leaning back against the headboard and deliberately keeping himself open.  
“Are you going to get undressed any time soon, or do you plan on doing nothing more than opening your fly?”

That finally gets Dean moving, and he closes the door, shrugging out of his jacket and dropping it carelessly on the edge of the mattress before he kneels on the bed. Sam stays still and purposefully relaxed as he watches Dean move closer; lets him press his knees further apart, so he can crawl into the space between them.  
“No, I certainly do not, but I believe the undressing is something you can help me with, as you’ve just demonstrated so incredibly well.”  
Sam is well aware that the request is designed to let him know that Dean won’t let him lie back and think of England. But, all ulterior motives and scheming aside, it’s not really what Sam would have wanted. He didn’t lie when he said that he wanted this because there’s a part of him that does. Granted, there’s also a much bigger part of him that probably would have denied himself, even if Dean had made the offer under less troubling circumstances, but that part of him can’t be in the driver’s seat right now. 

That still doesn’t change the fact that he hasn’t ever gone quite this far with a man, and there’s a certain nervous energy that sets his fingers trembling ever so slightly when he slides them over Dean’s shoulders to strip off his flannel shirt. He takes in the corded muscle of Dean’s upper arms on the way down, flesh and skin he’s had under his care countless times before, stitched together into a map that chronicles their many years, but the quality of the sensation is different now, in this new context. 

Dean doesn’t rush him or direct him in any way. He seems content to leave Sam to his own devices for the moment, just angling his body to make the slide of fabric easier as Sam removes every piece of clothing from his body. It’s not hurried or forceful, this mutual exploration. It breaks Sam all the more, since he can’t remove himself even an inch from it. It’s one thing to speculate on giving oneself over like this, but it’s another to experience it, when your captor keeps pulling bars from your cage. 

Dean finally withdraws a little to shuck off his pants, giving Sam a few seconds to catch his breath. His mouth goes dry when Dean reaches back to rummage through the pockets of his jacket, before dropping a couple of wrapped condoms and a bottle of lube next to Sam’s splayed thighs. 

Dean does nothing to quell his anxiety for a moment, just sliding his hands up and down on the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, grinning when he elicits an involuntary shudder from Sam when he brushes the erogenous zones. Then he reaches down next to the bed and retrieves the switchblade from his belt. Sam’s eyes snap to the keen edge once Dean flips it open.  
“No.”  
Sam swallows hard when Dean’s eyebrows draw together.  
“No, not yet. When… when we’re…”  
Dean’s expression clears and a look of sheer delight replaces the frown.  
“Why, Sammy, you are full of kinky surprises, aren’t you?”  
“Just… get on with it.”

Dean hums in response, putting down the blade in easy reach and opening the lube to coat his fingers liberally.  
“Alright, let’s try something else first then. I think you’re going to like it.”  
He slowly presses his finger in just barely past the resistance of Sam’s hole, teasing the rim with furtive touches. Sam takes in the feeling which is both strange and thrilling, but he has little time to process before Dean puts his lips to his straining erection, sucking lightly just under the head. Sam arches off the bed and into Dean’s mouth, so he hardly notices the finger slipping all the way in until he comes down from the sensation of Dean’s spectacularly skilled tongue sliding up and down his cock. 

He can’t really help threading his fingers into Dean’s hair and guiding his head to an angle that makes him his hips pump ever so slightly. He first expects Dean to object, but his brother leans into the touch, obviously adept at taking cues from his partners and very well versed in sucking cock. A strange sense of jealousy creeps into the back of Sam’s mind at the realization, but it’s swept away with the second finger starting to inch into him next to the first. It’s a tight fit and Sam definitely feels the friction now, especially when Dean’s fingers brush over what must be his prostate. It leaves him shivering with an electrified feeling that makes the hair on his body stand on end every time the tips of Dean’s fingers pass over the spot in an uneven, unpredictable rhythm. 

The steady in and out of the fingers combined with the ministrations of Dean’s tongue bring him closer to the edge a lot faster than he anticipates. A glance down to where Dean’s cheeks are hollowing out around the shape of his cock is what almost does Sam in though, even as the blood rushes to his head, burning in his cheeks with a bout of residual shame. His brother clearly reads the signs and closes his hand around the base in a tight grip to hold off his orgasm, leaving him flushed and frustrated, erection straining in Dean’s hand. 

Dean sits up, licks his swollen lips and looks at down him appreciatively while Sam is gasping for breath.  
“Well, looks like you’re just about ready for me.”  
He withdraws his fingers from Sam, causing him to grunt at the slight burn, and reaches for the little foil packets at the side. Sam comes crashing down fast when he hears Dean rip open the condom wrapper. He might not have much practical experience, but he knows enough to be sure that the prep work Dean did – while much more considerate than just spit for lube – is hardly enough to fit someone Dean’s size without some discomfort. 

Sam bites his tongue before any protest can slip out and braces himself for the pain of the intrusion. Dean obviously catches the sudden tension in his body anyway, judging from the smirk that tugs in the corner of his mouth, but it also turns out that he has other plans. Sam barely his time to draw a sharp, surprised breath when his brother slips the condom between his lips before bending over Sam’s erection. He fits it around the head, holding it in place with his tongue at first, and then sinks down with an agonizingly slow pace, rolling the condom down with his mouth. 

It’s all Sam can do to keep his hips from leaping off the mattress when he feels his cock hit the back of Dean’s throat and his brother’s nimble fingers rolling down the condom the rest of the way until it sits snug at the base. Dean pull off with a last, broad swipe of his tongue.  
“Better hold still now, Sammy, so I can have my wicked way with you.”

Sam’s mouth falls open in a silent scream when Dean climbs over him and takes him with one smooth movement until tight, clenching heat surrounds him completely and wipes his mind clean of any thought for a moment. 

He comes back to himself when Dean leans forward a little, resting his hands on Sam’s heaving chest. His hands fumble for purchase on the small of Dean’s back, right above where they’re joined in a way Sam hadn’t anticipated in all the fantasies and nightmares he’s had since they started this game. He tries to hold Dean still while he’s scrambling to put together his scattered mind, but his brother just slowly circles his hips against the bruising grip, grinding his buttocks down into the V of Sam’s legs. 

The first coherent thought that comes back to Sam is the question of whether Dean prepared himself at all for this stunt, when he spots the shiny black shape of what looks like a plug between the folds of the bedspread. His eyes snap back to Dean’s face and from the mischievous smirk spreading on Dean’s mouth, he has followed Sam’s line of sight.  
“Always prepared, isn’t that what they say? Now, are you going to let me move or do you plan on gaping at me like a fish for the rest of the night?”

Sam is still too flustered by the turn of events to put any coherent response together, but he has enough sense to loosen his grip on Dean and start going with the movement when his brother begins to roll his hips into a rise and fall driven by his powerful thighs. It’s not long before he finds himself meeting the downswing of the motion with an upward thrust of his own with a hypnotic rhythm. He catalogues every minute reaction from Dean’s breathless sighs to the tight heat of his insides, swept up by the vicious beauty of the contradictory creature writhing above him. Only when he catches sight of the angry, burning Mark branded on Dean’s forearm does he remember with icy dread that there is another thing he should be doing just now. 

Sam tries not to let his eyes linger on the Mark to keep from alerting Dean to his preoccupation with it, but he doubts he’s successful. Dean has barely started to breathe faster, even though sweat is running down his torso and he hasn’t taken his eyes away from Sam’s face the entire time. In a blink, they’re black and Sam can’t help feeling his cock jump inside Dean with a sharp hiss of breath. He expects a comment from Dean about his unwitting bodily confession, but his brother just raises his eyebrow, gaze sliding over to the switchblade lying at their side as if to ask ‘Now?’.

Sam swallows a groan and nods lightly, trying to focus on the actual purpose of the action instead of listening to his pulse quickening in anticipation of another taste. Dean slows his rise and falls to a slow grind again, fingers grappling for the knife and when he opens it, they both breathe in sharply with the sound of steel sliding from its sheath. Sam locks eyes with Dean, heart suddenly jumping at his throat when he wonders if his brother is contemplating whether to turn the blade in his hand and jab it right into his jugular to get his fix a different way. The moment hangs suspended between them for a second before Dean sets the knife to his own chest, cutting into his left pectoral from the dip of his collarbone down to the dusky skin of his nipple. 

Blood starts flowing from the wound freely at once, even though Dean never even flinches. Instead, he offers Sam the crimson edge of the blade, like you might offer the spoon to lick up left over cookie dough. Sam takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring and looking at the cosmic irony that is the road paved with all his good intentions. He tells himself that this is his last chance – he should back out, walk away, he should bury them both in here and rid the world of the Winchesters in all the good and bad ways forever. Anything but trying the same thing again and expecting different results. 

Dean’s hand doesn’t waver, he just holds it there, waiting patiently for Sam to fall as if he knows every single thought playing through Sam’s head. Knows just as well what the outcome is going to be. And Sam is going to take the long shot, because that is what they do for each other, for better or worse, with not even Death being able part them for any length of time. 

The steel feels cold, rough on his tongue as he slides it along the keen edge just shy of applying enough pressure to slice himself open with it. The taste of blood fills his mouth, but what’s lighting up the senses he hasn’t used in so long is what comes after. The power almost overwhelms him, now that he’s not actively trying to close himself off from it, primal and searching, curious and carving its path into him with reckless abandon. It replaces rational thought with pure want, a clamor rising in his head for _more, more, more_ and he barely realizes how he swipes aside the knife and surges up to suck and bite at the parted skin of Dean’s chest, thrusting his tongue deep into the crevice to keep it from closing up at supernatural speed, cutting him off from the source of the most dizzying rush he has ever experienced. 

Sam doesn’t care about Dean’s startled, pained hiss, the fingers burying themselves in his hair with the nails digging into his scalp or the sudden tightening around his erection. He rolls them around until he’s on top, hips driving a hard rhythm in sync with his tongue and takes in the world around him, like he’s never felt it before. The sensation is nowhere close to what he’s ever felt drinking another demon.

This. This feels _old_ , unrestrained and unstoppable, like being caught in the riptide currents of an ocean when he’s only ever swum in a placid lake. Though through all the new dimensions opening themselves up to Sam in the space of a single second, one realization crashes down on him with great intensity. 

The power tied to the Mark of Cain that has so fundamentally altered his brother yet let him stay the same is not a source of good, nor the root of evil. It’s a force of nature, setting Sam’s mind ablaze with _HUNT, TRACK, KILL, DEVOUR_ – the sound of eons of life cycles thrumming through his veins and if this is how Dean feels the entire time, Sam really needs to give him so much more credit for holding it together as he has. He is drowning in it, barely aware of his physical body and the sensation of carnal pleasure the only point of contact he still has with that plane until he hears a voice cry out and he crashes back into the rhythm that started with the beginning of time. 

There’s a hurricane whipping around inside of him and it’s finally in Dean’s wide, green eyes that shine with awe both in the delighted and frightful sense of the world that he finds a tether and remembers his mission. 

Through the myriad of colors he’s never consciously seen before, with his vision splintered into fractals, the Mark burns like a beacon of bright white, surrounded by a pulsing russet cloud that Sam realizes in the First Blade locked away underneath Dean’s skin. The structure of the whole spell is thrown into sharp relief in front of Sam’s eyes and he can’t help but reach out towards it. His left palm finally covers the Mark, skin on skin where Dean’s is raised and Sam’s is marred with the curved and faded scar that was his only link to reality years ago. He can see the shine of the Mark through the delicate web of veins in his hand and to his surprise it doesn’t scorch him, it burns cold. 

With a deep breath, Sam centers himself and begins to chant the mantra he committed to memory this afternoon, first under his breath and then with increasing force as the world slowly rights itself around him again into something more befitting of human perception. He tightens his hand around Dean’s forearm even though the cold slithers up his veins, dangerously close to his heart and he feels the muscles bunch under his fingers when Dean realizes something is happening and starts to struggle. 

“Sam, what are you doing!? Stop, you can’t…”  
But he doesn’t stop, not when the arm tries to twist in his grip, not when he feels the body buck underneath his, fingernails raking fiery lines down his back. Sam stays focused on the place where his palm touches the Mark, whispering the words of change and connection over and over. He holds his brother’s body down with his mind’s superior strength, an afterthought as awash with power as he is, and ignores Dean’s increasing cries of distress. 

And then, finally, after what feels like a lifetime passing them by, he feels the tendrils of the Marks power sink into his hand, and the skin writhe and blacken under his hand, until the smoke coalesces into the familiar shape of the First Blade that is pushed out of Dean’s body and materializes into the fragile piece of old bone that it is, clattering to the floor on the side of the bed. Dean screams with his head thrown back and Sam fits their lips together, swallowing the sound, sucking the air from his brother’s lungs. He reaches completion when the connection stretches taut like a rope between them, and feels Dean’s whole being tremble in sync with him. 

~*~

Sam wakes up on his back, with the sensation of strong fingers laced around his throat, and looks up into the furious face of his big brother.  
“What in the seven fucking Hells did you do, Sam?”  
Sam takes a deliberately deep breath against the tightness at his throat. He notices Dean’s grip marginally loosen in response while he tries to parse his new perception of the world around him. His head is still buzzing with the effect of Dean’s blood. The power moves sluggishly inside of him, languid and sated in comparison to the frenzied rush that drove him towards climax. He wants to bask in it, feel out the near infinite space that’s opened up in his mind, but that will have to wait.  
Now is the time to test whether his plan truly worked or not.  
“Feeling any homicidal urges right now?”

Dean’s eyebrow rises in clear exasperation.  
“Only towards _you_ , dumbass, because you obviously decided to go make a mess of things you had no business meddling with. You could have torn us both apart into our sub-atomic parts, did you realize? So again, what the Hell were you trying to do?”  
When his brother grabs Sam’s left wrist to drag his hand in front of his face to make a point, Sam feels his breath leave his lungs with a punch. Where for years he has had the jagged line that was ugly and irritated from his constant worrying of the stitches to ward off Lucifer, he is now scarred with a replica of the Mark of Cain, branded into his palm by the burning cold. He resists the urge to press his thumb into it, to see if reality changes at all in response. 

Dean’s fingers slide up from Sam’s throat, against his jaw and turn his head so they face each other, but he doesn’t do anything but hold Sam’s eyes while waiting for an answer. Upon reflection, Sam finds that there’s no reason not to come clean:  
“When I found out that there was no way to take the Mark off you without killing you, naturally, I started looking for alternatives. And I discovered that if I could tie its power to something other than the Blade, something with a different… focus, you could channel the power in some way that made you more human again.”  
That draws a derisive snort from Dean, but Sam doesn’t miss the slight tension that creeps into the hand still resting against his jaw. 

“I told you that I don’t _want_ to be anything but what I am. Your little plan failed because I still don’t feel one lick of those pesky human emotions that you want me have so badly.”  
But Sam knows his brother better than he knows himself and now that he’s not distracted by their game of cat and mouse anymore, he sees right through the bravado Dean puts up like a front.  
“Don’t you, though?”  
Sam brushes his fingers up Dean’s forearm, settles his branded palm against the ridge of the Mark and feels the constant thrumming in the back of his mind grow into a dull roar. The connection between them is palpable, an electric charge filling the air between them. In this moment, Sam finally understands. 

“You came to _me_. You made me go look for what you really wanted, but couldn’t figure out how to ask for. Because after all that boozing and brawling and generally not giving a fuck, you discovered that your new life as a demon without a care in the world is empty and cold. Because you’re not satisfied with violence and mayhem for the sake of it, you want them to have a purpose.”  
Dean flinches like he’s been slapped and he tries to wrench his arm out of Sam’s grip, face stormy with both rage and fear. Sam sees the angry red tendrils swell under Dean’s skin and hisses at the sharp pain when they snake out from the Mark over the back of his hand, too. He feels the power of the Mark rise with Dean’s distress, ready to lash out like a cornered animal. 

It fills his vision with a red mist that threatens to overwhelm his senses with the urge to fight and claw his way out. He nearly gets dragged under with it. Only the knowledge that he’s got to be the anchor that keeps Dean from going over the edge is what keeps him calm. It’s what lets peace wash over him and onwards in a tidal wave that crashes into the presence that is purely Dean. Sam opens his eyes to his brother staring at him, slack-jawed and bewildered.  
“How did you do that?”  
Sam shrugs, suddenly feeling exhausted both in body and mind.  
“Like I said, I gave the Mark a different focus. The power is still enormous, primal and very volatile. But we share the burden now and that should give you control _and_ access to your human side. You don’t have to fight, and you don’t have to kill, if you don’t want to. And I’m responsible for keeping it that way.”

Dean looks at Sam like he doesn’t quite believe him.  
“You’re telling me – while you’re all hyped up on demon juice that you got in the process of fucking your _brother_ – that you’re going to be my moral compass for humanity rehab? I’d say that’s a very clear case of the blind leading the blind right there, isn’t it?”  
Sam doesn’t flinch away from Dean’s challenging look before answering:  
“Hey, I never said it was the perfect fix. But if gets me as closes as possible to getting my brother back, you know well enough what I’m prepared to do…”

Dean bites his lip and Sam is both horrified and elated to see lines of old, worn pain carve themselves into his face.  
“Sam, I can’t… I… what I’ve done, what we…”  
He doesn’t even need to think about gathering Dean into his arms and drawing him down until they lie next to each other so he can whisper into the soft skin at Dean’s temple.  
“Shhh, it’s alright, it’s alright. It’s done, it’s over…”

Dean doesn’t cry or sob, but he lies there until the tremulous tension leaves his body and he slowly relaxes into Sam’s embrace. They drift in each other’s presence for a while, still getting used to the new way they feel each other and perceive the world around them. Sam can feel the hunger, the urge to hunt and tear and claim simmering like a dark red cloud beneath his skin. He understands intimately, what attracts Dean to giving himself over to that state of mind, but if his life has taught him one thing, it is how to resist forces that are greater, older and more cunning than yourself. Sam lets the sensation wash over him, like seaweed turning with an ocean current.  
“So, what are you going to do now, keep me cooped in here like a caged tiger so I can’t bite anyone by accident?”

Sam has barely had time to think about that question himself, with how slim the chances were that he would actually be able to pull off his plan as a whole, never mind that he had no idea what consequences to anticipate for himself. He might have considered it – keeping himself and Dean sequestered from the world so they are a danger to no one but themselves – before. But while he is shoring up his sheer determination against the Mark’s imperative to kill, the power itself hasn’t faded and it needs to go somewhere, toward a purpose. Sam can feel it in his bones that it will otherwise devour them until mere shells take their place. And who can tell what havoc they would wreak on the world if they got out like that, ears deaf from the ancient roar, eyes blinded by red mist. It’s his responsibility to lead them away from that path now. When he thinks about it for a moment, however, the solution is so instantly obvious, it almost hurts. 

“Nah. I was thinking, we should go at it the Winchester way.”  
He turns on his side to be able to look at Dean directly where he’s resting, his chin in the palm of his hand, looking down at Sam with watchful eyes.  
“Yeah? And what’s that?”  
“Well, let’s say we get out of here, kill some evil sons of bitches, and raise a little Hell.”  
A brilliant smile stretches Dean’s lips with a remnant of that vicious, playful edge. Sam knows he should worry about how the sight ignites the fire in the pit of his stomach, but he was well aware that dragging Dean closer towards humanity again, meant taking a step away from it himself. Everything has a price. The hunger for something he shouldn’t want, a temptation left buried deep for so long, is Sam’s.  
“Why, Sammy, you _do_ know how to make a guy feel special.”  
Sam chooses to shut down any more of Dean’s wisecracking with a hard kiss, worrying at his brother’s split lip with his teeth until a hint of the coppery taste fills his mind with a sharp, dangerous bliss. 

There will come a time when their luck runs out and even stubborn Winchester determination won’t be enough to keep the howling at bay.  
He’ll make sure that whatever friends they have left by the time have a way to take them down.  
But not now.  
Not for a good long while.


End file.
